Giuseppe Vitagliano
Portrait of Giuseppe Vitagliano

Giuseppe Vitagliano

Theoretical physicist · Ramón y Cajal Fellow
Instituto de Física Corpuscular (IFIC), CSIC – Universitat de València

I am a theoretical physicist working in quantum information, many-body physics and the foundations of quantum theory. Since September 2026 I have been a Ramón y Cajal Fellow at the Instituto de Física Corpuscular (IFIC), CSIC – Universitat de València.

Before joining IFIC, I built and led a research team at the Atominstitut of TU Wien as principal investigator of two projects funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), following postdoctoral positions at IQOQI Vienna and at the University of the Basque Country, where I also completed my PhD.

Research

My research lies at the intersection of quantum foundations, quantum information, many-body physics, quantum sensing and metrology, and quantum thermodynamics, and explores the connections between them. The main underlying theme is quantum correlations, both between the parts of a system and between measurements made at different times. I investigate them as resources and distinguish them from classical correlations, with applications to many-body physics, thermodynamics and metrology.

Reviews I co-authored

Many-body physics and phases of matter

Sketch of a square lattice of particles. A region A in the middle is outlined, and the bonds that link it to the rest of the lattice, B, are highlighted.
Entanglement between a region A of a many-body system and the rest, B.

In systems of many particles, entanglement is hard to pin down: individual particles can rarely be addressed, and often only a few collective quantities can be measured. I develop methods to detect and quantify entanglement from such data, notably generalizations of the spin-squeezing inequalities to particles with many internal levels, and use them to study how entanglement changes across phases of matter and with temperature. For example, in a model of spins that all interact with each other, we found that entanglement can appear at nonzero temperature even in an ordered phase whose ground state is separable. Much of this work is done in close contact with experiments on ultracold atoms.

Key papers

Thermodynamic laws and transformations in the quantum regime

Sketch of thermodynamical operations, such as compression and coupling, as a dynamical transformation of a gas of particles in a box.
Thermodynamical transformations with dynamical control over a many-body system.

The laws of thermodynamics limit how much work can be extracted from heat, what it costs to erase information, and how close to absolute zero a system can be cooled. What these limits become for quantum systems, where correlations can be both a resource and a cost, is still being clarified. I study the energy, time and control complexity needed to cool a quantum system, the work needed to correlate its parts, and how entanglement is created and transformed by elementary thermodynamic operations on many-body systems, such as the compression of a one-dimensional Bose gas. These questions lead towards thermal machines made of quantum fields, which could be realized with ultracold atoms.

Key papers

Quantum metrology

Sketch of a Bloch sphere. The collective spin points to its surface, where a narrow ellipse, its squeezed uncertainty, is drawn over the dashed circle of an unsqueezed state. A curved arrow around the vertical axis marks a rotation by the angle theta.
A squeezed collective spin: its uncertainty is reduced along the direction of a rotation θ, so that θ can be measured more precisely.

Quantum correlations allow sensors and clocks to go beyond the precision attainable with classical resources. I study which correlations are responsible for this advantage and how large it can be, using tools such as the quantum Fisher information and uncertainty relations, with a particular focus on estimating several parameters at the same time. With experimental colleagues, we recently used pairs of entangled three-level strontium atoms to estimate two phases on two optical clock transitions simultaneously. I also study timekeeping itself: how precisely a device with finite memory can tick, and when quantum devices outperform classical ones with the same memory.

Key papers

Career

  1. since 2026Ramón y Cajal Fellow, Instituto de Física Corpuscular (IFIC), CSIC – Universitat de València
  2. 2024Italian National Scientific Habilitation as Associate Professor, Condensed Matter Theory
  3. 2022–2026Principal Investigator, Atominstitut, TU Wien Two FWF Stand-Alone projects: “Spatio-temporal correlations in many-body quantum systems” and “Non-equilibrium quantum working fluids: dynamics and usage”
  4. 2017–2022Postdoctoral researcher, IQOQI Vienna, Austrian Academy of Sciences Postdoc and then Lise Meitner Fellow (FWF) in Marcus Huber’s group; from 2021 senior postdoc in the Young Independent Research Group on causal order
  5. 2015–2017Postdoctoral researcher, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Bilbao
  6. 2010–2015PhD in Quantum Science and Technology, UPV/EHU, Bilbao Thesis: Spin squeezing, macrorealism and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Supervisor: Géza Tóth
  7. 2007–2010Master’s degree in Theoretical Physics, University of Pisa Thesis: Area laws for entanglement, QMA-completeness of the local Hamiltonian problem and the simulation of quantum mechanics. Supervisors: José Ignacio Latorre and Pasquale Calabrese
  8. 2004–2007Bachelor’s degree in Physics, University of Pisa Thesis (in Italian): Rotating cylinders and the possibility of closed timelike curves in general relativity. Supervisor: Enrico Meggiolaro

Publications

Work from 2026 is listed below; further highlights appear with each research line above. Complete lists are on Google Scholar and ORCID, and preprints on arXiv.

  1. Least variable quantum counting processes B. Olamaei, F. Meier, C. Budroni, P. Bakhshinezhad, G. Vitagliano arXiv:2608.26240
  2. Qutrit entanglement and joint multi-parameter estimation in an optical clock platform O. Lib, S. Liu, M. Ammenwerth, H. Timme, S. Sun, Q. He, M. Huber, G. Vitagliano, I. Bloch, J. Zeiher arXiv:2608.05426
  3. The uncertainty geometry of finite-dimensional position and momentum D. Thakuria, S. Liu, G. Vitagliano, K. Szymański arXiv:2605.11876
  4. Thermal entanglement and out-of-equilibrium thermodynamics in 1D Bose gases J. Mathé, N. K. H. Li, P. Bakhshinezhad, G. Vitagliano arXiv:2604.01157
  5. Characterizing resources for multiparameter estimation of SU(2) and SU(1,1) unitaries S. Du, S. Liu, F. E. S. Steinhoff, G. Vitagliano Quantum 10, 2130 (2026)
  6. Estimating the best separable approximation of non-pure spin-squeezed states J. Mathé, A. Usui, O. Gühne, G. Vitagliano Quantum 10, 2078 (2026)
  7. Uncertainty relations between quantum Fisher information and entanglement monotones S. Du, S. Liu, M. Fadel, G. Vitagliano, Q. He Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 110806 (2026)
  8. Characterizing high-dimensional multipartite entanglement beyond Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger fidelities S. Liu, Q. He, M. Huber, G. Vitagliano Quantum 10, 1995 (2026)

Contact

Giuseppe.Vitagliano@ific.uv.es

Instituto de Física Corpuscular (IFIC), CSIC – Universitat de València
Parc Científic, C/ Catedrático José Beltrán 2
46980 Paterna (Valencia), Spain

Students and postdocs interested in this research are welcome to get in touch, as are colleagues who would like to collaborate.