2022

The Paul Ehrenfest Best Paper Award for Quantum Foundations recognizes outstanding and influential research contributions to the foundations of quantum physics. We are proud to announce the paper winner of this year.

The award, established and awarded by the Vienna Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information, aims to raise awareness on the relevance of the field of quantum foundations in modern research, and to draw attention to new and interesting achievements in the field. The prize is awarded to the most significant paper in foundations of quantum physics, theoretical or experimental, published in a peer-review journal in the five calendar years prior to the prize call (i.e., this year between January 1st, 2017 and December 31st 2021). Papers from all areas in the foundations of quantum physics, and by authors of any background, are eligible for the award, see the rules.

The winner of the 2022 Paul Ehrenfest Best Paper Award for Quantum Foundations is:

The committee awarded the prize to Renou et al. for “proving that quantum theory based on real numbers and quantum theory based on complex numbers give rise to different predictions and identifying explicitly a Bell-type experimental scenario where this happens, hence opening the possibility for an experimental falsification of quantum theory based on real numbers.”

The 2022 selection committee was:

• Anne Broadbent, University of Ottawa, Canada
• Mohamed Bourennane, Stockholm University, Sweden
• Tracy Northup, University of Innsbruck, Austria
• Marcin Pawlowski, University of Gdansk, Poland
• Ämin Baumeler, Costantino Budroni and Yelena Guryanova, YIRG, IQOQI Vienna, Austria

Ämin Baumeler, Costantino Budroni and Yelena Guryanova coordinated the selection process and are looking forward to inviting you to the online public award ceremony and lecture to be announced soon here and on our Facebook page.