Elisabeth Giacobino
Elisabeth Giacobino (born April 2, 1946) is a French physicist who works with light and quantum physics. She is a pioneer in quantum optics and quantum information. Her main topics are laser physics, nonlinear optics, quantum optics, and super‑fluidity.
She studied at the École Normale Supérieure, earned the Agrégation in 1969, and earned a PhD in Physics from Université Paris VI in 1976, focusing on laser spectroscopy of neon without Doppler broadening. She joined CNRS in 1969 and spent most of her career there. She was an invited professor at New York University (1982–83) and later served as CNRS Research Director (1982–2002) and Director of Research at the Ministry of Education (2003–2006). Since 2011 she is Research Director Emeritus at CNRS. She has also been a professor at the University of Auckland and an advisor to CNRS.
Giacobino has published more than 230 papers and given over 110 invited talks. She coordinated four European projects and held many leadership roles in science administration. She is a member of Academia Leopoldina and a fellow of the European Physical Society, the European Optical Society, and the Optical Society of America. In 2008 she helped prepare a statement on the situation of women physicists in France at the ICWIP.
Her research spans laser spectroscopy in the 1970s, demonstration of two‑beam squeezing in 1987, studies of noise in semiconductor and micro‑lasers, and quantum-state generation with cold atoms. She proposed methods to generate squeezed light (1995) and entangled beams (2003), and explored electromagnetically induced transparency and quantum memories in atomic ensembles. She also studied semiconductor microcavities, single‑photon generation in nanocrystals, and various quantum‑information topics. Since 2015 she has advised the French National Research Agency on quantum technologies.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 00:58 (CET).