Arun K. Pati

Arun Kumar Pati (Odia:ଅରୁଣ କୁମାର ପତି) is an Indian physicist notable for his research in quantum information and computation, the theory of geometric phases and its applications, as well as quantum mechanics. He is considered an important physicist in the field of quantum information and quantum computation in India, perhaps the first.

Originally from the state of Odisha in India, Pati obtained his PhD from the University of Bombay, Mumbai. In 1989, he took up a position as a theoretical physicist in the Theoretical Physics Division, BARC, Mumbai, India. From 1998-2000, he was a visiting scientist and an EPSRC fellow at the University of Wales, Bangor, UK. He was a visiting scientist at the Institute of Physics, Bhubaneswar, India from 2001-2010. Currently, he is a Professor of Quantum Information at the Harish Chandra Research Institute, Allahabad, India since 2011. He is honored with K. P. Chair Professorship at Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China during the period 2013-2015.

Along with Samuel L. Braunstein, he proved the quantum no-deleting theorem. Similar to the no-cloning theorem, the no-deleting theorem is a fundamental consequence of the linearity of quantum mechanics.His other important collaborative work with Braunstein includes the quantum no-hiding theorem. This states that if quantum information is lost from one subsystem then it remains in the rest of the universe and cannot be hidden in the quantum correlation between the original system and the environment. This has applications that include quantum teleportation, quantum state randomization, thermalization and the black hole information loss paradox. The no-hiding theorem has been experimentally tested and this is a clear demonstration of the conservation of quantum information. He also discovered the remote state preparation protocol in quantum information theory, which has been experimentally tested by several groups. He along with other scientists introduced the concept of geometric phase for mixed states. This has been experimentally measured by several groups around the world. In another fundamental work, Pati along with L. Maccone have discovered stronger uncertainty relations that go beyond the Heisenberg uncertainty relation. These new relations capture the notion of incompatible observables and show that quantum world is more uncertain than what Heisenberg-Robertson uncertainty relation has explicated us.

Pati is the recipient of the India Physics Association Award for Young Physicist of the Year (2000) and the Indian Physical Society Awards for Young Scientists (1996). He is also recipient of Samanta Chandra Sekhar Award for the year 2009 from Orissa Bigyan Academy, Bhubaneswar, Orissa. He is an elected Fellow of the Indian Academy of Science, Bangalore. He also has been elected as the Fellow of The National Academy of Sciences, India in 2013. His research have been featured in news items in Nature and Science.

• Samuel L. Braunstein and Arun K. Pati, Quantum Information with Continuous Variables, Kluwer Academic Publisher, The Netherland, 2003.
• Derek Abbott, Paul C. W. Davies, and Arun K. Pati (Eds.), with Foreword by Roger Penrose, Quantum Aspects of Life, Imperial College Press, 2008, ISBN 978-1-84816-253-2.