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. Morgan W. Mitchell (ICFO, Barcelona)

When and where

From: 11/2010 To: 11/2016

Description

2009/09/30,  Prof. Morgan W. Mitchell (ICFO, Barcelona)

Place: Sala de Seminarios del Departamento de Física Teórica e Historia de la Ciencia
Time: 12h.
Title: Quantum non-demolition measurements of cold atoms and
quantum-enhanced atomic sensing


Abstract
Atomic ensembles, collections of many identical atoms, are interesting
systems for studying the quantum physics of light-matter interactions.
 The ensemble behaves as a macroscopic quantum system, interacting
strongly with the light field and robust against the loss or
decoherence of individual atoms in the ensemble.  Using laser-cooled
rubidium-87 in an optical dipole trap, we demonstrate an atomic
ensemble with very strong light-matter interactions (an effective
optical depth of ~50 with only 10^6 atoms).  Using paramagnetic
Faraday rotation to probe the spin polarization, we demonstrate
quantum non-demolition measurement with quantum-limited sensitivity.
In parallel, we develop quantum light sources suitable for atomic
probing.  I will discuss applications to entanglement generation,
atom-based magnetometry and possibly more exotic topics such as
non-linear measurements that 'beat' the 1/N Heisenberg scaling limit.