Aephraim M. Steinberg

Steinberg was interested in science from a young age, asking questions to his father, an electrical engineer, about the behaviour of electrons in circuits. As a graduate student, he was particularly interested in open questions and apparent paradoxes of quantum mechanics, though was told that he would hopefully "grow out of it". and it received an award from the American Physical Society. The publications containing the main results of Steinberg's doctoral work have been cited extensively == Career and research ==

In 2002, Steinberg started a quantum information research program with CIFAR, which has since been renewed multiple times. It supports fundamental research into quantum technology, including how best to utilize it for problems that are not tractable on current systems, and determining exactly what those problems might be. In 2011, Steinberg was awarded first place by Physics World in its yearly "top 10 breakthroughs" for his work leading "weak measurements" to "to track the average paths of single photons passing through a Young’s double-slit experiment". Conventional interpretation of the quantum uncertainty principle suggests that it is impossible to determine both the position and momentum of a particle, thereby preventing an observer from finding out what the trajectory of a particle was when passing through the slits to reach its final position on the screen. Weak measurement allows experimentalists to circumvent this limitation by performing measurements that provide minimal information, and also minimally perturb the system as popularized by Yakir Aharonov and others. The work was carried out using pairs of entangled photons generated by quantum dots. Another project exploiting properties of light was an experimental implementation of a method to resolve details beyond the Rayleigh Criterion with phase measurements. Steinberg has led work aiming to quantify how long a particle spends tunnelling through a barrier, confirming that the process is not instantaneous. Experiments were carried out using cooled rubidium atoms guided through a laser beam as a barrier. By applying a magnetic field and measuring the atoms' spin before and after tunnelling, a time estimate was obtained. == Awards and honours ==

• 2021 named "University Professor" at the University of Toronto in recognition of his numerous and continued contributions to quantum physics since joining the university in 1996. • 2020 one of five Physics World quantum highlights for "Measuring quantum tunnelling time". • 2016 Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (FRSC) • 2011 Physics World Breakthrough of the Year. • 2009 Optica Fellow for "pioneering experimental and theoretical contributions to quantum optics and information, particularly concerning tunneling times, quantum measurement, and the generation and characterization of entangled states". • 2008 Fellow of the American Physical Society for "pioneering theoretical and experimental contributions to the understanding of fundamental quantum phenomena including photon and atom tunneling and the quantum information stored in cold atomic gases". • 2007 E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship. • 2006 McLean Award. • 2006 Herzberg Medal for "seminal experimental and theoretical work on superluminal effects, entanglement of more than two photons, Bose-Einstein condensation of cold atoms, and quantum information", awarded by the Canadian Association of Physicists. • 2006 Rutherford Memorial Medal from the Royal Society of Canada. • 1999 Premier’s Research Excellence Award. • 1996 Deborah Jin Award for Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Research in Atomic, Molecular, or Optical Physics. == References ==