The 2025 ICTP Prize has been awarded to Titas Chanda of IIT-Madras and Sthitadhi Roy of the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences, Bengaluru, the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) has said. A statement said the award “recognises the winners’ exceptional and original contributions to the theory of quantum many-body systems, at the interface of condensed matter and quantum information science,” and that their work has “opened new directions in the understanding of non-equilibrium dynamics of quantum systems, quantum correlations, and measurement-driven phase transitions. ” That is, the physicists study many interacting quantum particles using ideas from both condensed matter physics and quantum information science.
This work is relevant to problems in keeping quantum devices — like quantum computers and sensors — under control and understanding what they do when they’re not in equilibrium. Quantum many-body systems are those with lots of quantum ‘pieces’, e. g.
electrons in a solid or atoms in an ultracold gas, whose collective behaviour is dominated by how they interactions. Because the particles influence each other, physicists can’t usually understand the whole system by solving for one particle at a time.
Condensed matter is the branch of physics dealing with collective behaviour in materials and engineered matter, including magnets and superconductors. It tries to answer questions like: what phases exist? Why do they magnetise? How do they conduct heat? What happens near a phase transition? And so on. Likewise quantum information science treats quantum states as information and uses quantities like entanglement and entropy to characterise and manipulate them.
According to the ICTP, Dr. Chanda, an assistant professor at IIT-Madras, shared the prize for contributions to quantum information science and quantum many-body physics, including work on quantum correlations and open quantum systems as well as applications such as “quantum batteries, communication protocols, and resource theories. ” His work includes the development of numerical tools and results across areas that the release listed as quantum optics, cold atoms, and strongly correlated systems, the statement added.
Dr. Roy, an assistant professor at the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences in Bengaluru, under the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, shared the prize for contributions to “the non-equilibrium dynamics of quantum many-body systems,” including work on “measurement-induced phenomena, many-body localisation, and emergent phases of quantum matter.
” In its release, the ICTP said his research includes results on “hybrid quantum circuits” and “protocols that harness measurements to prepare exotic topological and dynamical phases. ” The ICTP Prize is an annual affair and has been awarded since 1982 to young scientists from developing countries. It carries a certificate and a cash component.
Past winners from India include Mohit Kumar Jolly, Narendra Ojha, Aninda Sinha, Shiraz Minwalla, Ashoke Sen, and G. Baskaran.
Each year’s prize is also given in honour of a scientist who made “outstanding” contributions to the field that that year’s prize focuses on. The 2025 prize was dedicated to the memory of Italian physicist Giancarlo Ghirardi, “whose tireless work on the foundations of quantum mechanics” the release said anticipated “entanglement-based modern quantum information methods”. The ICTP was founded by Pakistani physicist and Nobel laureate Abdus Salam in 1964 to support scientists from developing countries.