Quantum Physics

Working on nanotechnologies in the cleanroom makes her happy. Now Kirsten Moselund runs the newly established Laboratory for Nano and Quantum Technologies at PSI. Here she always has an eye on practical applications: from minute lasers to computer chips, from artificial intelligence to quantum computing. She encourages young women in particular to pursue a career in research and recommends a good work-life balance.

Researchers at ETH Zurich have succeeded for the first time in trapping excitons - quasiparticles consisting of negatively charged electrons and positively charged holes – in a semiconductor material using controllable electric fields. The new technique is important for creating single photon sources as well as for basic research.  

Quantum physics has a long tradition at ETH Zurich. Now it is further expanding its teaching and research activities. Around 150 students are completing the novel Master’s degree programme in Quantum Engineering, there is a “Quantum Center” and quantum computers are to be built in the ETHZ-PSI Quantum Computing Hub.

A team of EPFL scientists engineer nanoscale guitar strings that vibrate tens of billions of times when plucked at cryogenic temperatures, with a material originally developed for electronic transistors.

The shape of galaxies and how they evolve depend on a web of cosmological filaments that run across the Universe. According to a recent study headed by EPFL’s Laboratory of Astrophysics, this cosmic web plays a much bigger role than previously thought.

Twelve years of intense work are now bearing fruit – researchers at Empa have developed unique carbon materials with quite astonishing, hitherto unattained electronic and magnetic properties, which one day could be used to build quantum computers with novel architectures. A million-dollar grant from the Werner Siemens Foundation for the next ten years now gives this visionary project an unusually long research horizon, greatly increasing the prospects for success.