Quantum Physics

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.

Mickael L. Perrin wants to build tiny power plants from graphene nanoribbons that generate electricity from heat. His ambitious project won him one of the prestigious ERC Starting Grants from the EU and one of the 32 Eccellenza Professorial Fellowships by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). He will take up an assistant professorship at ETH Zurich – and continue his research at Empa.

Researchers at ETH Zurich have succeeded, for the first time, in quickly and continuously correcting errors in digital quantum systems. This means they have overcome an important hurdle on the road to practical quantum computing.

Researchers at EPFL, China, Spain and the Netherlands have built a micro-device that uses vibrating molecules to transform invisible mid-infrared light into visible light. The breakthrough ushers in a new class of compact sensors for thermal imaging and chemical or biological analysis.

An international team led by EPFL scientists, has unveiled a unique quantum-mechanical interaction between electrons and topological defects in layered materials that has only been observed in engineered atomic thin layers. The phenomenon can be reproduced by the native defects of lab grown large crystals, making future investigation of Kondo systems and quantum electronic devices more accessible.

EPFL and Microsoft Research scientists demonstrated ultrafast optical circuit switching using a chip-based soliton comb laser and a completely passive diffraction grating device. This particular architecture could enable an energy-efficient optical datacenter to meet enormous data bandwidth requirements in future.