Canadian research tops 2011 physics highlights

Experimental work by Aephraim Steinberg and colleagues from the University of Toronto on the fundamentals of quantum mechanics was the crowning achievement in physics research during the year, according to a poll of editorial staff at Physics World.

A Canadian team also took second place in the journal’s scientific breakthrough list for 2011. The team from the National Research Council of Canada in Ottawa made advances in the use of weak measurement, which has enabled them to map out the wavefunction of an ensemble of identical photons.