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

Prof. George Japaridze, Institute of Physics, Tbilisi, Georgia

When and where

From: 12/2012 To: 12/2016

Description

2011/05/30,  Prof. George Japaridze, Institute of Physics, Tbilisi, Georgia
Place:  Sala de Seminarios del Departamento de Física Teórica e Historia de la Ciencia
Time: 12h
Title: Charge and spin dynamics in quantum wires
Abstract
We analyze the dynamics of charge and spin degrees of freedom in a quantum wire with spin-orbit (SO) coupling. We show that modulation of the SO coupling drives a transition from a metallic to an insulating state when the period of the modulation becomes commensurate with the Fermi wavelength of the electrons in the wire. We also analyze the dynamics of the helical modes in the presence of a spatially nonuniform SO interaction and strong electron-electron correlations. Here a randomly fluctuating Rashba SO coupling opens a scattering channel which causes localization of the edge modes. Implications for experiments on topological insulators will be discussed.