Tobias Fritz

Welcome to my page. I am a "physical mathematician" in the group of Antonio Acín at ICFO in Castelldefels (Barcelona). My scientific interests revolve around fundamental physics and its natural connections to pure mathematics and computer science.

I'm a bird concerned about the increasing fractionalization and fragmentation of science. I can frequently see people in different "fields" working on essentially the same problem using a different language. Pointing out these connections is one of my major themes. Just studying the puzzle pieces is not enough: we need to put them together. As a start, you may consider learning the languages, motivations and methods used in other areas of science.

Sometimes I like to hang around on Orpheus e.V. or on the n-Category Café.

Papers and preprints

Notes and Slides from Talks

• Quantum correlations and group C*-algebras.
• Witnessing Infinite-dimensional State Spaces.
• Horn Formulas as Linear Inequalities and Nonlocality Paradoxes.
• Tsirelson's problem and Kirchberg's conjecture.
• Cuntz' proof of Bott periodicity for C*-algebras.
• Quantum correlations and group C*-algebras.
• Curious properties of iterated measurements.
• Abstract Convexity: Results and Speculations.
• Abstract Convexity.
• The Geometry of the Standard Model.
• The Geometry of Black Holes.

• Himmelsmechanik.
• Verschränkung und Verschränkungsmaße.
• Episodengedächtnis bei rabenartigen Vögeln.
• Evolutionäre Algorithmen.

Travel Calendar

• 2012 Aug 11–19: CdE SommerAkademie 2012-1, Kirchheim.
• 2012 Aug 26–31: Information Flow and Its Applications, Schloss Dagstuhl.
• 2012 Sep 8–15: Université de Montréal, with Prakash Panangaden.
• 2012 Sep 15– ?: Perimeter Institute of Theoretical Physics.
• 2012 Oct 22–25: Experimental Search for Quantum Gravity: the hard facts, Perimeter Institute.

Scientific Principles

• Restrain from speculative discussions about fundamental physics. Rigorous mathematical arguments and clear experimental results are superior over philosophical arguments and personal opinions.


• Mathematical proofs should not merely be concatenations of formal manipulations, but also convey mental images representing a certain intuition. (This is very difficult to achieve, and mostly I do not succeed despite attempting it.) Another principle of exposition is to split long considerations into bite-sized pieces, such that each piece makes sense on its own.