Meet an Associate - Luis Foà Torres

Luis Foà Torres, ICTP Associate and Professor of Physics at the University of Chile (FCFM), discusses his life and research.

Tell us a little about yourself..

I’m a condensed matter physicist from Argentina working in Chile, and I love coffee, photography, technology and the outdoors.

I have contributed to problems like light-induced topological phases, and coauthored one of the seminal papers on the non-Hermitian skin effect. This a situation unique to non-Hermitian lattices (lattices with gains and losses or non-reciprocal couplings) whereby even a pristine system may have all or a large part of the eigenstates localized at one edge.

What are you working on right now?

Now, I’m working on driven quantum systems, eventually including dissipative effects.

What about this project most excites you?

The ramifications of developing an idea outside my main field, which we are trying to publish (I’m actually about to post the preprint).

Which life/research question would you most like to answer?

I would most like to understand three things: the machinery behind a quantum measurement, what consciousness really is, and if there is any space for free will.

Describe yourself in under 5 words.

Physicist, imagining brave new worlds.