Yoshihisa Yamamoto (scientist)

Yamamoto was born in Tokyo on November 21, 1950. In 1973 he received his B.S. degree from Tokyo Institute of Technology. He continued his studies at the University of Tokyo where he received his M.S. in 1975 and Ph.D. in 1978. From 1978 to 1992, he worked at NTT Basic Research Laboratories in Tokyo. Since 1992, he has been a professor of applied physics and electrical engineering at Stanford University in the United States and currently a professor (emeritus). Since 2003, he also has been a professor at National Institute of Informatics in Tokyo and currently a professor (emeritus). In 2019, he became a founding director of NTT PHI Labs in Silicon Valley, California, the United States. == Work ==

Yamamoto's scientific focuses in the 1980s were coherent optical fiber communications,), and control of a single spin qubit in a quantum dot using optical pulses. During the 2010s, his work has continued on exploring quantum dots as a platform for building both quantum repeaters and quantum computers. One highlight was the co-first demonstration (with Ataç İmamoğlu's group at ETH) of entanglement between a spin in a quantum dot and a photon emitted by it. Work on exciton-polaritons continued. Since 2012, Yamamoto has studied the required number of physical qubits and expected computational time in a gate-model fault-tolerant quantum computer and pioneered the development of a novel quantum/classical hybrid computer, called coherent Ising machine inspired by developments in digital coherent optical communications and degenerate optical parametric oscillators. == Awards ==

Yamamoto is a fellow of the Optical Society of America (now Optica), the American Physical Society, and the Japan Society of Applied Physics. In 1985, Yamamoto received the Achievement Award of the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers (IEICE) of Japan on his early work on coherent optical communications. In 1992, he received the Nishina Prize and the Carl Zeiss Award on his pioneering work on squeezed state generation in semiconductor lasers. In 2000, he received the IEEE LEOS Quantum Electronics Award and the Matsuo Science Prize. In 2005, he received the Medal of Honour with Purple Ribbon from the Government of Japan. In 2010, he was the Hermann Anton Haus Lecturer at MIT and gave a lecture on exciton-polariton condensation. In 2011, he received the Okawa Prize on his pioneering work on single photon generation from a quantum dot. In 2022, he received the Willis Lamb Award on his pioneering work on coherent Ising machines. == References ==