Main accomplisher: Chang-Pu Sun, Hai-Tao Quan
The second prize of National Natural Science Award in 2008
Quantum physics is not only the foundation of modern sciences, but also the trigger to many technology revolutions. The cross breeding of quantum physics and information and computer sciences gave birth to a new interdisciplinary science --- quantum information, which provides a promising solution to the scaling limit of the development of computer integrated circuits. Since the year of 1987, Chang-Pu Sun had been conducting avant-garde yet fundamental studies on the theory of open quantum systems and other topics in quantum physics, which had solidified the foundation for the applications of quantum information many years later (1996 and forth). Since his previous researches fitted well with the development of quantum information sciences, Chang-Pu Sun has been capable of contributing a series of novel research results on the foundation of quantum information and its physical realization.
Chang-Pu Sun has published more than 150 articles on SCI journals up to date (over 80 are on the Phys. Rev. series and 9 among them on Phys. Rev. Lett.), which have been cited over 1600 times (including 1200 times cited by others). His article on q-deformed bosons has been cited over 300 times (256 times SCI citations) and is internationally one of the three pioneering articles in the relevant field. The article was enlisted on "Most cited journal article on mathematical physics"(ranked 51st among 100 well-known papers) by the Stanford University Library in 2001 and won the ISI "Citation Classic Award" (there only two physics articles in China) in the United States. His works had been mentioned in a review article on the development of scientific researches in China by the American journal "Science" in 1995. His researches on quantum adiabatic approximation and induced gauge fields, begun 17 years ago, have redrawn attention since 2005 because of the development of the experiments on magnetically confined cold atoms. Related to this, Chang-Pu Sun et al. proposed the crucial scheme of separating chiral molecules by utilizing the Stern-Garlach effect of induced gauge fields. This work had been reported and reviewed on the front page of the British “Physics World”. His research on the dynamical sensitivity of quantum phase transitions has drawn international attention in 2006, because of its connections to various research fields in physics, such as quantum measurement, quantum chaos and condensed matter physics.
The major academic achievements of Chang-Pu Sun include the following:
1. proposed the concept of q-deformed bosons and gave the microscopic interpretation of their low-energy collective excitations; proposed a theoretical scheme for constructing quantum memory by using collective quasi-spin-wave excitations; realized for the first time the bosonic representation of SU(n) quantum algebra and the structure of the quantum group for a new solution of Yang-Baxter equation;
2. proposed the high-order correction method to quantum adiabatic approximation and the generalized Born-Oppenheimer approximation and studied the observable effects of induced gauge fields; studied the coherent integration of solid-state qubits, the cooling of nanomechanical oscillators, and the adiabatic manipulation problem of Josephson junction qubits; pointed out the commensurability of single-particle spectrum for a spin chain with variable coupling and its viability of perfect quantum state transfer;
3. established the factorization model of quantum decoherence and a self-consistent quantum measurement theory; revealed the localization phenomena of wave packets caused by the irreversible processes through an exactly solvable quantum dissipation model; discovered the quantum chaotic property or the dynamic hyper-sensitivity of a spin chain near its critical point, which is characterized by the enhanced decoherence effect of the external system that couples to the spin chain . The theroretical predication of the enhanced decoherence has been shown in a most recent experimnet based on NMR in a Gememny group ledaded by D Suter (arXiv:0709.3273).
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