The Paul Ehrenfest Best Paper Award for Quantum Foundations recognizes outstanding and influential research contributions to the foundations of quantum physics. The aim of the award is to raise awareness for the field of quantum foundations, and to draw attention to new and interesting achievements in this area without delay. It is awarded for the most significant publication in the foundations of quantum physics, theoretical or experimental, during one calendar year. Candidate publications must be published in a peer-reviewed journal. Other than that, papers from all areas in the foundations of quantum physics, and by authors of any background, will be eligible to receive the award.

The Paul Ehrenfest Best Paper Award for Quantum Foundations for the year 2016 was awarded to:

The paper by Bendersky et al. argues that quantum experiments requiring randomness exhibit a different behavior depending on whether we use pseudo-randomness produced by Turing machines or true randomness. To prove their point, the authors identify situations in which ensembles of quantum states defining the same mixed state become arbitrarily distinguishable when prepared by a computer. Their work also points out a new loophole in the violation of Bell inequalities, stemming from the use of pseudorandom number generators to choose the measurement settings.

Selection committee 2016:

1. Alain Aspect, Institut d'Optique, France
2. Miguel Navascués, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Austria
3. Marek Zukowski, University of Gdansk, Poland
4. Rob Spekkens, Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Canada
5. Aephraim Steinberg, University of Toronto, Canada