iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Aephraim Steinberg @quantumaephraim.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

An exciting week for our group – first, Daniela's paper on observing negative "excitation times" was published (at long last!) in PRL: journals.aps.org/prl/abstract... ; (1/2)

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Aephraim Steinberg @quantumaephraim.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

So, I do have to say it: if you're in Denver at the #APSGlobalSummit, and will still be here (and awake) at 8am on Friday, please come to Mile-High Ballroom 4F, and I'll tell you about "The Private Lives of Photons: asking particles where they spent the night" – come

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Aephraim Steinberg @quantumaephraim.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

14,000 physicists are visiting Denver this week. But I'm sure that's just a coincidence.

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Aephraim Steinberg @quantumaephraim.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

14,000 physicists are visiting Denver this week. But I'm sure that's just a coincidence.

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Aephraim Steinberg @quantumaephraim.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

14,000 physicists are visiting Denver this week. But I'm sure that's just a coincidence.

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Aephraim Steinberg @quantumaephraim.bsky.social · 03/01/2026

Happy 2026, and hearty Congratulations to Antoine Browaeys, Misha Lukin, and Mark Saffman on the 9th biennial John Stewart Bell Prize for their ground-breaking work developing quantum computational technologies relying on tweezer arrays of Rydberg atoms! cqiqc.physics.utoronto.ca/bell-prize/b...

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Aephraim Steinberg @quantumaephraim.bsky.social · 14/12/2025

Holiday throwback... our group around the turn of the Millennium, when we were younger and (even) more playful. CW from upper left, Stefan Myrskog, Jalani Kanem, some kid I don't recognize, Marcelo Martinelli, Ana Jofre, Mirco Siercke, & Samansa Maneshi.

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Aephraim Steinberg @quantumaephraim.bsky.social · 29/11/2025

Find me another school whose fundraiser performances include a dramatic recitation of Catullus (in the original, certe) ! Vivat #TheAbelardSchool !

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Aephraim Steinberg @quantumaephraim.bsky.social · 05/11/2025

I love quantum computing (& quantum information science, even more), don't get me wrong -- but we have to acknowledge how much of the so-called "ecosystem" this captures:

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Aephraim Steinberg @quantumaephraim.bsky.social · 08/10/2025

Put in mind of the Infinite Improbability Drive, as I listen to Bárbara Amaral explain over @cqiqc-uoft.bsky.social Quantum Tea how contextuality may power anomalous heat flow… see journals.aps.org/prxquantum/a... for more on her actual work... #Contextuality #QuantumThermodynamics

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Aephraim Steinberg @quantumaephraim.bsky.social · 07/10/2025

Happy day of Quantum, and congratulations to John Clarke, Michel Devoret, & John Martinis! There's no stopping it now! #NobelPrize #SuperconductingQubits #QuantumTunneling nobelprize.org/prizes/physics…www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2025...df

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Aephraim Steinberg @quantumaephraim.bsky.social · 24/09/2025

Crazy milestone passed over (I think) in silence – as of last November or so, I have spent over half my life as a professor at the University of Toronto. [Since as people my age understand, I firmly believe I'm in my early 30s, this implies that I became a professor at around 16.]

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Aephraim Steinberg @quantumaephraim.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

Chuffed^* to announce our theory on how long an unabsorbed photon causes atoms to spend in the excited state is out: lnkd.in/gF--eQgV It extends the dichotomy to a confounding "simple to state, but looks wrong; turns out to be right, but this is difficult to prove."

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Aephraim Steinberg @quantumaephraim.bsky.social · 08/09/2025

U of T is thrilled to celebrate the Year of Quantum by advertising three new faculty positions! Please spread the word, encourage friends/mentees to apply, or consider applying yourself. (Links in rest of thread) #QuantumOptics #QuantumInformation #AMO @cqiqc-uoft.bsky.social

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Aephraim Steinberg @quantumaephraim.bsky.social · 06/09/2025

Nominations for the 2026 #BellPrize are being accepted through September 30th, 2025 – please consider nominating the work from the past 6 yrs which you believe has done the most to advance #Quantum science. Please RT. (See cqiqc.physics.utoronto.ca/bell-prize/n... .) @CQIQC_Toronto

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Aephraim Steinberg @quantumaephraim.bsky.social · 28/08/2025

Lazaro Felice! Seeing atoms floating in vacuum and glowing bright in the laser beams that suspend them there (while cooling them millions of times below room temp) should always be inspirational, even if it's now routine for AMO physicists & the MOT is nearing its 40th birthday.

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Aephraim Steinberg @quantumaephraim.bsky.social · 13/08/2025

Nominate the most innovative work on Fundamental Issues in Quantum Mechanics and their Applications for the 2026 John Stewart Bell Prize! (Pls rebleep!) See cqiqc.physics.utoronto.ca/bell-prize/n... Deadline 30 August 2025. #QuantumInformation #FoundationsOfQM #BellPrize #QuantumPhysics

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Aephraim Steinberg @quantumaephraim.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

Heads-up: we'll be searching this Fall for a tenure-stream faculty member in Theoretical #QuantumOptics (#AMOPhysics #QuantumInformation) at U of T Physics @cqiqc-uoft.bsky.social Official ad out next month – please alert potential strong candidates you may know! www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3-5...

youtube.com

U2 - I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For (Official Music Video)

YouTube video by U2VEVO

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Aephraim Steinberg @quantumaephraim.bsky.social · 02/07/2025

Super-fascinating new article out, on the speed of particles in a forbidden region. For me, it raises more questions than it answers, which is of course my favorite kind of experiment. Kudos to the authors for a novel approach and technical tour de force! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.com

Energy–speed relationship of quantum particles challenges Bohmian mechanics - Nature

The study of the relationship between particle speed and negative kinetic energy, arising in regions in which, according to classical mechanics, particles are not allowed to enter, reveals behaviour t...

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Aephraim Steinberg @quantumaephraim.bsky.social · 01/07/2025

Finally got around to reading this fascinating article by Amanda Gefter -- kudos on an epic investigation and a gripping story! Sad but also inspiring. Thanks for making his writings publicly available - I hope this will lead to new inspirations as well as to restoring his legacy.

nautil.us

Finding Peter Putnam

The forgotten janitor who discovered the logic of the mind

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Aephraim Steinberg @quantumaephraim.bsky.social · 27/06/2025

Disgusting Weaponizing the justice department, and research funding, against what the US has left of intellectual institutions. Against one of the real good guys, at that. His crime? Not dismantling efforts in support of equity vigorously enough. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/27/u...

nytimes.com

University of Virginia President Resigns Under Pressure From Trump Administration

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Aephraim Steinberg @quantumaephraim.bsky.social · 22/06/2025

Fearing yet more war; hoping for peace. May war-mongering leaders be removed, and innocents everywhere be safe. What else is worth saying?

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Aephraim Steinberg @quantumaephraim.bsky.social · 21/06/2025

RIP Ray Laflamme, gone too soon. Ray was a stellar scientist, the founding director of ⁦‪the IQC‬⁩ and ⁦‪of CIFAR's‬⁩ Quantum Information program, but more importantly a warm & generous human who built community and helped many (particularly junior researchers). May his memory be a blessing.

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Aephraim Steinberg @quantumaephraim.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

Krister Shalm in the news again, with a new paper on the Colorado Random Number beacon. Well, we always did say that getting a paper into Nature was a roll of the dice... Always exciting to see our group members go on to lead such creative & successful efforts! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.com

Traceable random numbers from a non-local quantum advantage - Nature

A study demonstrates a public generator of random numbers based on device-independent techniques, with the randomness being fully auditable and traceable.

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Aephraim Steinberg @quantumaephraim.bsky.social · 01/05/2025

I like to hope we're already doing this in Physics (at least in most groups..), but a discussion around a more systematic approach like this would not be out of place.

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Aephraim Steinberg @quantumaephraim.bsky.social · 18/04/2025

Just sharing for the yocks. Seriously, YOCTOjoules. How many of you have even *heard* that prefix before? That's 10^-5 visible photons, in case you're keeping count. "Fieldoscopy." arxiv.org/abs/2504.13121

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Aephraim Steinberg @quantumaephraim.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

I was apprehensive about big airlines moving their routing to #QuantumComputers so early, but here we go... Lufthansa has inaugurated their new double-slit service! (It feels like we landed safely, but that may just be because of that eavesdropping observer in the background.)

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Aephraim Steinberg @quantumaephraim.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

You know you have achieved peak fringe when someone publishes an April Fool's joke and you're disappointed they didn't cite your earlier work...;) home.cern/news/news/ph...

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Aephraim Steinberg @quantumaephraim.bsky.social · 30/03/2025

Belatedly sharing the great news that my colleague Joseph Thywissen has been named a Fellow of @OpticaWorldwide ! Congratulations to a jolly good one! cqiqc.physics.utoronto.ca/news/recent-... @CQIQC_Toronto @uoftphysics

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Aephraim Steinberg @quantumaephraim.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

Congrats to Melanie Woodin, U of T's next President! (Should say in passing that it seems to me she'll be our 1st female president, and it's especially heartening that this can happen without any one [until me, apologies- maybe one step of meta will excuse me] feeling that needs to be emphasized.)

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Aephraim Steinberg @quantumaephraim.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

Kyle doing a masterful job of motivating and explaining our work on atomic excitation times in his #CQIQC seminar: www.physics.utoronto.ca/research/qua... [to appear on CQIQC youtube channel]

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Aephraim Steinberg @quantumaephraim.bsky.social · 08/03/2025

Oh, another one! They kept some of my "Holland Tunnel" analogy, and then segué'd into Emily Adlam on retrocausality... Have only skimmed so far... how'd they do? Better than the rest so far, I trust? #NegativeTime #FoundationsOfQM www.bbc.co.uk/future/artic...

bbc.co.uk

The bizarre quantum paradox of 'negative time'

Cause is usually followed by effect, but in the quantum world, time's sequencing is not so straightforward.

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Aephraim Steinberg @quantumaephraim.bsky.social · 28/02/2025

Ok, something to remember the next time we're complaining about our "publish or perish" culture... #AcademicChatter

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Aephraim Steinberg @quantumaephraim.bsky.social · 21/02/2025

Stop slurping at Microsoft's trough, and read about something interesting instead, like our old group member Luciano's efforts to measure the onset of reality (or sth like that -- I still have to read the paper 😉 arxiv.org/abs/2502.13932

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Aephraim Steinberg @quantumaephraim.bsky.social · 21/02/2025

Hmm. Came back from a few weeks out of the loop to run into this headline, and must just say: At least they're honest enough to put it on the "Business" page instead of "Science" ;) [Honestly, good luck to them. I'll be thrilled if this time they're telling the truth. ;} ]

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Aephraim Steinberg @quantumaephraim.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

The pigeons have come home to roost, at long last! Congrats to Noah, Aharon, & the rest – just out in PNAS: how strong & weak quantum measurements compare in regards to sum rules and other desiderata, by using the seeming violation of the "pigeonhole principle." www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

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Aephraim Steinberg @quantumaephraim.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

Looking forward to #Time and #Quantum Theory! tiqt2025.quantummechanics.it

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Aephraim Steinberg @quantumaephraim.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

I think the in-flight PA announcement just said we could purchase any of our favorite atoms from duty-free, and I am really hoping to get a good deal on some Francium.

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Aephraim Steinberg @quantumaephraim.bsky.social · 22/01/2025

Nice, & odd, to visit a uni and realize that the postdoc I used to know at UofT is now chair of Physics here, but esp to have him claim that auditing my course waybackwhen has had lasting influence on his career. In general, lots of friendly & creative people here I haven't seen in too long.

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Aephraim Steinberg @quantumaephraim.bsky.social · 22/01/2025

Congrats, Joseph! twitter.com/cqiqc_toront...

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Aephraim Steinberg @quantumaephraim.bsky.social · 26/12/2024

Another one... still quite a few misunderstandings, but they're *different* to those in previous articles, so maybe that's progress? #QuantumOptics #NegativeTime #FastLight www.nationalgeographic.fr/espace/physi...

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Aephraim Steinberg @quantumaephraim.bsky.social · 22/12/2024

Great pic of Daniela in this latest shot at explaining what we mean by negative time (unfortunately, we're a bit delayed getting our own explainer up there)... phys.org/news/2024-12... #Quantum #QuantumOptics #NegativeTime

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