About QUINST

Quantum mechanics is at the heart of our technology and economy - the laser and the transistor are quantum devices - but its full potential is far from being realized. Recent technological advances in optics, nanoscience and engineering allow experimentalists to create artificial structures or put microscopic and mesoscopic systems under new manipulable conditions in which quantum phenomena play a fundamental role.

Quantum technologies exploit these effects with practical purposes. The objective of Quantum Science is to discover, study, and control quantum efects at a fundamental level. These are two sides of a virtuous circle: new technologies lead to the discovery and study of new phenomena that will lead to new technologies.

Our aim is  to control and understand quantum phenomena in a multidisciplinary intersection of  Quantum Information, Quantum optics and cold atoms, Quantum Control, Spintronics, Quantum metrology, Atom interferometry, Superconducting qubits and Circuit QED and Foundations of Quantum Mechanics.

QUINST is funded in part as a “Grupo Consolidado” from the Basque Government (IT472-10, IT986-16, IT1470-22)  and functions as a network of groups with their own funding, structure, and specific goals.  

Latest events

Seminar

Dr. Daniel Ballester (Queen's University Belfast)

When and where

From: 12/2011 To: 12/2016

Description

2010/05/13, Dr. Daniel Ballester (Queen's University Belfast)

Place:  Sala de Seminarios del Departamento de Física Teórica e Historia de la Ciencia
Time: 12h.
Title: Quantized Surface Plasmon Polaritons

Abstract
 
Plasmonics is a rapidly growing area of research based at the nanoscale that is currently experiencing intensive studies by researchers from many areas of the physical sciences. Plasmonic-based anophotonic devices using surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) have recently started to attract much interest from the quantum optics ommunity for their use in quantum information processing (QIP). In this talk I will discuss some practical techniques for efficiently enerating and controlling plasmonic excitations at the quantum level. I will also introduce a rigorous quantum mechanical model for escribing how photons and different forms of SPPs interact. With a clear description and theoretical understanding of these interactions, he rapid development of novel QIP applications, using nanostructured devices based on linear and nonlinear plasmonic effects will become ossible.