After a year of transition, the birth of a new GDR, supported by the INP and INSIS CNRS Institutes, with which quantum information community is mostly associated, appeared to be essential. The goal of the GDR "Quantum Information: Foundations and Applications" is two-fold: first, to establish a common base of knowledge, and second, to use this platform to emulate new knowledge.
The first mission involves the development of an educational process through specific actions. To gather more effectively various members of our community and also to attract the youngest, will be planned, at the beginning of our conferences, pedagogical seminars on the specific theme of the conference. Then, round tables, at the end of the conference, involving members of the various communities (physics, chemistry, information science, mathematicians, industry, philosophy, etc.), will ensure both the development, the technology foresight and also debates about the foundations, applications and implications of quantum physics. Finally, the board members of the GDR will be available to promote Quantum Information for any master degree within the Universities. In this context, the first colloquium organized by the GDR had the shape of a school of physics on Quantum Information for PhD students, post-docs, and young researchers. The idea was to offer to the participants, through the thematics identified by the GDR (ART), high level tutorial lectures, talks relating the state-of-the-art, and poster sessions for the youngest. More details about this colloquium are available here.
The second and main task of the GDR aims at turning effective the federation and to lead to the production of new knowledge. The idea is to establish an actual "bound-free" laboratory in order to display cohesion and unity at the national level. Freely inspired by renowned institutes such as Institute of Ciències Fotòniques (ICFO) in Barcelona, the Centre for Quantum Technology (CQT) in Singapore, the Institut fuer Quantenoptik und Quanteninformation (IQOQI) in Vienna, the Joint Quantum Institute from the University of Maryland and NIST (JQI), etc.., our GDR will be partly based on on the use of new media, including the creation of an efficient web page. Exchanges between the various members of this community will be facilitated, while their respective areas of expertise will be clearly identified and made available to the largest number, both nationally and internationally.
The main key points of our work can be summarized as follows:
- following the lead of the previous GDR, a willingness to shape the discipline in order to create stronger bridges between the various involved thematics;
- the establishment of a shared basis of knowledge through specific lecturing activities when the workshops of the GDR occur;
- the promotion of foundations and applications of Quantum Information in a "bound-free laboratory" to facilitate the emergence of new projects which meet the current and future challenges of the field.