The European Research Counsil (ERC) has awarded its Consolidator Grants (CoG) to 328 outstanding scientists in 25 EU Member States with a total budget of 678 million euros. Matthias Althammer was awarded one of these prestigious grants, allowing him to implement his ambiguous research project, on antiferromagnetic magnonics as a platform for energy-efficient information processing. "I am very happy that Matthias was successful in this highly competitive funding scheme with a total success rate of only 14.2%”, Rudolf Gross, scientific director at WMI, says.
The Max Planck Semiconductor Laboratory (HLL), the Technical University of Munich (TUM), and the Walther Meißner Institute (WMI) of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (BAdW) have agreed on a groundbreaking collaboration for the joint development of superconducting quantum bits, or qubits, and quantum processors based on them. This partnership, established within the Munich Quantum Valley (MQV), marks a significant step in the research and advancement of quantum technologies. The collaboration aims to develop superconducting qubits as key components for future quantum computers.
Press Release (German)
In their experiment, researchers at the WMI design and characterize a multimode superconducting quantum circuit that forms an artificial molecule. The circuit has two characteristic nonlinear oscillation modes. One is used as a protected qubit mode that can be efficiently decoupled from the measurement circuit to prevent the loss of quantum information. The second mode is used as a mediator that controls the interaction between the qubit mode and the measurement circuit. This protected multimode qubit has the potential to also suppress unwanted interactions between neighboring qubits, thereby solving another major challenge in scaling up quantum processors. It can thus serve as a building block for a quantum processor architecture that retains the performance of a single qubit at large scale.
As part of the "MOQS – Molecular Quantum Simulations" consortium, researchers at WMI explored the potential of quantum computing to simulate the quantum effects that govern chemical reactions. Their findings suggest that the chemical industry could be among the earliest beneficiaries of advancements in quantum computing. The report was prominently featured as the cover article in the September issue of Physics Today and is available to read online free of charge.
Quantum technology allows for unconditional security in microwave-based communication. Now, a team of researchers from the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BAdW), the Technical University of Munich (TUM), the University of Tokyo, and Rohde & Schwarz GmbH joined forces to demonstrate the successful realization of a quantum key distribution (QKD) protocol in the microwave regime. This significant achievement is highly relevant for modern communication systems.
The workshop on Rare-Earth Ions for Quantum Information 2024 is taking place in Munich from 17 to 20 September 2024, hosted by the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities in its premises at the Munich Residence. The oranizing team includes Nadezhda Kukharchyk of WMI/BAdW and Andreas Reiserer of NAT/TUM. The scientific program will be complemented by an informal get-together in the evening of September 17, and lab tours on September 20 in the afternoon.
