Martin Plenio is listed as highly cited researcher for the fourth time in a row.

The work of the group as a whole is recognised with Martin’s inclusion on the list of highly cited researchers which recognises the approximately top 0.1% of researchers worldwide that have published a significant number of highly cited research articles.

Our work on Quantum Physics and Biology featured Local and National Radio

We are always keen to present our research to the general public.

Enjoy radio shows on our work on the local Radio Free FM and the national Deutschlandfunk.

 

Ludovico Lami wins a Humboldt Fellowship to continue his work in our group for another 2 years

Ludovico will use his Humboldt fellowship to explore the properties of quantum resource theories and other mathematical aspects of quantum information theory thus greatly strengthening the quantum information arm of the group.

 

Martin Plenio is selected as Highly Cited Researcher for 2019!

After 2017 and 2018 this is the third time Martin has been selected. A great recognition for the entire group that has contributed to this success with its great work over the last years!

 

Second ERC Synergy grant for the group

Great success for the Institute of Theoretical Physics. In a team with Fedor Jelezko at Ulm and Jan Ardenkjaer-Larsen at the Technical University of Denmark, Martin Plenio wins the ERC Synergy grant HyperQ – Quantum hyperpolarisation for ultrasensitive nuclear magnetic resonance and imaging. This project will allow us to continue our exciting work on diamond based hyperpolarisation that was started with the theory proposal in our group [1] and the first experiments in Fedor Jelezko’s group [2]. We arejoined by Jan Ardenkjaer-Larsen who has pioneered dissolution DNP and as a team we hope to develop this technology to bring it to applications.

[1] J.M. Cai, A. Retzker, F. Jelezko and M.B. Plenio. A large-scale quantum simulator on a
diamond surface at room temperature.
Nature Physics 9, 168 -173 (2013) and E-print arXiv:1208.2874

[2] P. London, J. Scheuer, J.M. Cai, I. Schwarz, A. Retzker, M.B. Plenio, M. Katagiri, T. Teraji, S. Koizumi, J. Isoya, R. Fischer, L.P. McGuinness, B. Naydenov and F. Jelezko. Detecting and polarizing nuclear spins with nuclear double resonance on a single electron spin. Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 067601 (2013) and E-print arXiv:1304.4709

Congratulations to Zhenyu on the birth of his baby girl Qian-Qian!

Congratulations, Zhenyu, on the birth of Qian-Qian!

We wish you and your family all the best!

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Julen Pedernales wins the best poster award!

Julen Pedernales wins the best poster award at the Bad Honnef seminar on Levitated Optomechanics

https://www.we-heraeus-stiftung.de/veranstaltungen/seminare/2019/levitated-optomechanics/

 

Reinhart Koselleck-Projekt: 1,5 Millionen Euro für „risikobehaftete Forschung"

Mit Quantentechnologie Kernspin-Anwendungen revolutionieren

 

Congratulations to Ish Dhand for winning a "Foschungsbonus"

Ish wins a well-deserved “Forschungsbonus”, an award of the Ulm University for excellence in research, to recognize his work on tensor networks and their application to the modelling of system-environment dynamics and quantum simulation as well as his successful cooperation with experiment.

Well done, Ish!

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Martin Plenio is selected as Highly Cited Researcher again in the 2018!

list of Clarivate Analytics

A great recognition for the entire group that has contributed to this success with its great work over the last years!

Congratulations to Joachim on the birth of his baby!

Congratulations, Joachim, to the birth of your baby!

We wish you and your family all the best!

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2018 Summer BBQ

Last week we had our 4th summer BBQ!

Thank you everyone for the nice company and the delicious international food!

Looking forward to next summer

 

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Ping pong 2018!

Once again, for the third year in a row, the Institute has celebrated the ITP  Table Tennis Tournament.

Trough the month of June our lives have been enlightened with breathtaking ping pong matches that most probably we will never forget.

This year the Podium has been occupied by the crème de la crème of our Table Tennis players, and we are speaking of a worldwide level.

So we want to thank and congratulate Ish, Myung-Joong and Dario for their incredible performance, but also we would like to extend our gratitude to all the other players that have given us incredible emotions.

#WannaPlay

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Albert finally comes home!

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Congratulations to Ewa on the birth of baby Helena!

Congratulations, Ewa, to the birth of your daughter, Helena Maria!

We wish you and your family all te best!

Benedikt was awarded for the best presentation by the participants of the QuantumFutur Academy!

QuantumFutur Award finalists (including our own Benedikt) presented their work to the QuantumFutur Academy participants in a poster session and Benedikt’s poster talk was chosen as the best presentation!

Way to go!

Here is the link to the press release and here is the link to the Poster.

Korbinian and Pelayo participated in IQST’s Quantum Science Slam

IQST’s Quantum Science Slam took place on February 8th at the Theaterhaus Stuttgart:

7 amazing performances, a fully packed hall and great fun. The audience have voted:
1st winner: Lukas Kürten from the Max Planck Institute FKF
2nd winners, jointly: Sven Bodenstedt from University of Stuttgart and Korbinian from our group! Well done!


Here is a photo collage of the event:

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Martin Plenio is listed as Highly Cited Researcher 2017

As one of only two theoretical physicist in Germany, Martin is listed in the annual compilation of the worlds most cited and influential scientists. We are delighted with this award which recognizes the excellent work of the entire group over the last decade.

The listing can be found here.

A 4-year long project bears fruit with a publication in Nature Physics

In 2010 we proposed theoretically a new method for efficient quantum state tomography for large quantum systems. In a joint project with the trapped ion group at Innsbruck we have achieved the first experimental demonstration of this method. The project started in 2013 required the sustained effort of two generations of PhD students (Tillmann & Milan) and postdocs (Ish & Marcus). Well done!

ITP work is chosen as Editor’s Suggestion in PRL

Our recent article “Resource Theory of Superposition,” by T. Theurer, N. Killoran, D. Egloff, and M. B. Plenio, has been highlighted as an Editor’s Suggestion in the most recent volume of Physical Review Letters.
The article can be found here.

Jorge is a dad!

Congratulations, Jorge, to the birth of your daughter, Alejandra!

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We hope you have a joyful and healthy journey ahead and we are looking forward to Alejandra’s first  visit to the institute!

Work of the group is published in Science

Recently, Ilai and Martin, in a collaboration with Liam McGuinness and Fedor Jelezko and their team, published their work in Science. In a joint theoretical and experimental work NMR signals of nanoscale samples were measured in a setup that is capable, in principle, of resolving chemical shifts and J-coupling which are essential quantities to identify molecules or determine their structure.

Click here to view the article

Quantum biology work of the group features in a full page particle in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung

Our work on the role of the interplay of quantum dynamics and the environment, notably vibronic coupling, is reported upon in a science special in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, a leading German weekly. It also explains our recent collaboration with the Christoph Lienau to show that vibronic coupling that we introduced to quantum biology is also active in organic photovoltaics.

Click here to view the article

ITP and the Center of QuantumBioSciences is part of newly approved Collaborative Research Center 1279

ITP and the Center of QuantumBioSciences is part of newly approved Collaborative Research Center 1279 on “Exploiting the Human Peptidome for Novel Antimicrobial and Anticancer Agents”. Our team contributes to the CRC with a project on hyperpolarized nanodiamond as contrast agents for cancer research. Funded initially for a period of 4 years the CRC may be extended for a duration of up to 12 years.

<link med fakultaet med-detailseiten news-detail article rund-121-millionen-neuer-peptid-sonderforschungsbereich-koerpereigene-wirkstoffe-gegen-hiv>www.uni-ulm.de/med/fakultaet/med-detailseiten/news-detail/article/rund-121-millionen-neuer-peptid-sonderforschungsbereich-koerpereigene-wirkstoffe-gegen-hiv/

The work of the Institute was mentioned in The Economist

The work of the Institute on hyperpolarized magnetic resonance imaging was mentioned in a recent special on quantum technologies by The Economist:  http://www.economist.com/node/21718308?frsc=dg%7Cc .

In our work, Ilai, Qiong, Benedikt, Pelayo, Janica and Martin are collaborating closely with our friends from the Institute of Quantum Optics to use diamond quantum technologies to create very strong nuclear spin polarization in nanoscale diamonds as well as metabolic molecules outside of the diamond substrate. As the signal in a magnetic resonance scanner is proportional to the polarization of the target, this has the potential to strongly enhance the imaging capabilities of MRI. Our dream is to use these ideas to revolutionize cancer imaging and hence improve its detection as well the assessment of treatment success. Supported by the EU Project HYPERDIAMOND we have made encouraging progress, but we want to go further. With our start-up NVision Imaging Technologies  we are pursuing the translation of this quantum technology to the real world !

Congratulations to Jorge Casanova for winning a “Forschungsbonus”!

Jorge Casanova wins a “Forschungsbonus”, <link in fakultaet in-detailseiten news-detail article forschungs-und-lehrboni-vergeben-psychotrauma-quanten-und-stochastik-forscher-sowie-innovative>www.uni-ulm.de/in/fakultaet/in-detailseiten/news-detail/article/forschungs-und-lehrboni-vergeben-psychotrauma-quanten-und-stochastik-forscher-sowie-innovative/, an award of the Ulm University for excellence in research, to recognize his work on the control of electron and nuclear spins in diamonds and trapped ions.

Well done Jorge !

Two articles from ITP in first issue ever of QST journal

We are proud that our group has two articles in the first issue ever of the new journal ‘Quantum Science and Technology’:

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Coherent control of quantum systems as a resource theory

 J.M. Matera, D. Egloff, N. Killoran, and M.B. Plenio
Quantum Sci. Technol. 1, 01LT01 (2016)|ArXiv

While controlling a quantum system is a standard task nowadays, we are still far away from developing quantum computers, and one might wonder what is the difference between the two. Qualitatively the difference is that for quantum computing one needs to control quantum systems in a quantum way, using quantum systems instead of directly using the large apparata or (classical) electromagnetical fields that often are enough to control a quantum system directly. In this letter we make this idea precise by building a theory which allows us to quantify the usefulness of controlling a quantum system through a quantum system instead of using a classical one.

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Realising a quantum absorption refrigerator with an atom-cavity system

M. Mitchison, M. Huber, J. Prior, M.P. Woods and M.B. Plenio
Quantum Sci. Technol. 1, 015001 (2016)|ArXiv
licensed under CC BY 3.0

Cooling of atomic motion is an essential precursor for many interesting experiments and technologies, such as quantum computing and simulation using trapped atoms and ions. In most cases, this cooling is performed using lasers to create a kind of light-induced friction force which slows the atoms down. This process is often rather wasteful, because lasers use up a huge amount of energy relative to the tiny size of the atoms we want to cool. Here, we propose to solve this problem using a quantum absorption refrigerator: a machine that is powered only by readily available thermal energy, such as sunlight, as it flows through the device. We describe how to build such a refrigerator, and predict that sunlight could actually be used to cool an atom to nearly absolute zero temperature. The refrigerator works by trapping the sunlight between two mirrors, in such a way that every single photon makes a significant contribution to the friction force slowing the atom down. Similar schemes could eventually be important for reducing the energy cost of cooling in future quantum technologies.

Most Recent Papers

Efficient Information Retrieval for Sensing via Continuous MeasurementPhys. Rev. X 13, 031012arXiv:2209.08777

Active hyperpolarization of the nuclear spin lattice: Application to hexagonal boron nitride color centers, Phys. Rev. B 107, 214307, arXiv:2010.03334

Driving force and nonequilibrium vibronic dynamics in charge separation of strongly bound electron–hole pairsCommun Phys 6, 65 (2023)arXiv:2205.06623

Asymptotic State Transformations of Continuous Variable ResourcesCommun. Math. Phys. 398, 291–351 (2023)arXiv:2010.00044

Spin-Dependent Momentum Conservation of Electron-Phonon Scattering in Chirality-Induced Spin SelectivityJ. Phys. Chem. Lett. 2023, 14, XXX, 340–346arXiv:2209.05323

Contact

Ulm University
Institute of Theoretical Physics
Albert-Einstein-Allee 11
D - 89069 Ulm
Germany

Tel: +49 731 50 22911
Fax: +49 731 50 22924

Office: Building M26, room 4117

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