ERC FUNDED PROJECTS

The transition from quantum to classical is an essential issue in physics. At a practical level, quantum information thrives to build large quantum systems for tasks in communication or computing beyond the reach of classical devices. At the fundamental level, the question is whether there exists, in addition to environment-induced decoherence, another mechanism responsible for the disappearance of state superpositions at the macroscopic scale. Harmonic oscillators coupled to qubits are ideal to probe the limits of the quantum domain. Among various versions of this system, microwave Cavity Quantum Electrodynamics coupling Rydberg atoms to superconducting cavities has developed tools of un-matched sensitivity and precision. Building on these advances and on the development of deterministic atomic sources, DECLIC proposes to explore the dynamics of fields trapped in cavities and to study their decoherence under various perspectives. It will implement novel ways to generate non-classical states with large photon numbers stored in one cavity or non-locally split between two. DECLIC will record the gradual evolution of these states towards classicality and locality. Along this way, it will explore promising processes such as quantum random walks and collective photonic effects leading to non-classical interferometry breaking the standard quantum limit. Beyond witnessing decoherence, DECLIC will investigate ways to manipulate and control it, either by implementing feedback procedures steering the field towards targeted states, or by engineering artificial environments protecting against decoherence specific states of light. These experiments will provide invaluable clues for the understanding of other oscillator-qubit systems exploring the quantum to classical boundary.

2 500 000 €

Start date: 2010-02-01, End date: 2016-01-31

The innovation of DELPHINS application will consist in building a generic multi-sensor design platform for embedded multi-gas-analysis-on-chip, based on a global modelling from the individual NEMS sensors to a global multiphysics NEMS-CMOS VLSI (Very large Scale Integration) system. The latter constitute a new research field with many potential applications such as in medicine (specific diseases recognition) but also in security (toxic and complex air pollutions), in industry (perfumes, agribusiness) and environment control. As an example, several studies in the last 10 years have demonstrated that some specific combination of biomarkers in breath above a given threshold could indicate early stage of diseases. More generally, patterns of breathing gas could constitute a virtual fingerprint of specific pathologies. NEMS (Nano-Electro-Mechanical Systems) based sensor is one of the most promising technologies to get the required resolutions and sensitivities for few molecules detection. We will focus on the analytical module of the system (sensing part + embedded electronics processing) that will include ultra-dense (more than thousands) NEMS arrays with state-of the art CMOS transistors. We will obtain integrated nano-oscillators individually addressed within an innovative architecture inspired from memory and imaging technologies. Few molecules sensitivity will be achieved thanks to suspended resonant nanowires co-integrated locally with their closed-loop and reading electronics. This would make possible the analysis of complex gases within an integrated portable system, which does not exist yet.

1 723 206 €

Start date: 2009-11-01, End date: 2014-10-31

Disorder is ubiquitous in nature and has a strong impact on the behaviour of many physical systems. The most celebrated effect of disorder is Anderson localization of single particles, but many other more complex phenomena arise in interacting, many-body systems. A full understanding of how disorder affects the behavior of quantum systems is still missing, also because of the unavoidable presence of nonlinearities, dissipation and thermal effects that make a careful exploration of real condensed-matter systems very difficult. In this project we want to fully exploit the unprecedented potentialities offered by ultracold atomic quantum gases to explore some of the present challenges for our understanding of the physics of disorder. These systems offer indeed the possibility of controlling to a great extent crucial parameters such as the type of disorder, the nonlinearities due to interactions, the temperature and density, the dimensionality, the quantum statistics. A variety of advanced diagnostic techniques allow to gain detailed information on the static and dynamic properties of the system. The potentialities of atomic quantum gases for the study of disorder have already showed up in recent breakthrough experiments. The project aims at an experimental exploration, supported by advanced theory, of the current issues in disordered quantum systems. We will investigate a few frontier themes of general interest: 1) Anderson localization and the interplay of disorder and a weak interaction; 2) strongly correlated, disordered bosonic systems; 3) disordered, interacting fermionic systems. In the research we will employ atomic Bose and Fermi gases with tunable interactions and advanced diagnostic techniques that we have recently contributed to develop. A successful completion of the project will push forward our understanding of the behaviour of quantum systems with disorder, with a potentially large impact on many fields of physics.

2 500 000 €

Start date: 2010-03-01, End date: 2015-02-28

Deep packet inspection (DPI) lies at the core of contemporary Network Intrusion Detection/Prevention Systems and Web Application Firewall. DPI aims to identify various malware (including spam and viruses), by inspecting both the header and the payload of each packet and comparing it to a known set of patterns. DPI are often performed on the critical path of the packet processing, thus the overall performance of the security tools is dominated by the speed of DPI. Traditionally, DPI considered only exact string patterns. However, in modern network devices patterns are often represented by regular expressions due to their superior expressiveness. Matching both exact string and regular expressions are well-studied area in Computer Science; however all well-known solutions are not sufficient for current network demands: First, current solutions do not scale in terms of speed, memory and power requirements. While current network devices work at 10-100 Gbps and have thousands of patterns, traditional solutions suffer from exponential memory size or exponential time and induce prohibitive power consumption. Second, non clear-text traffic, such as compressed traffic, becomes a dominant portion of the Internet and is clearly harder to inspect. In this research we design new algorithms and schemes that cope with today demand. This is evolving area both in the Academia and Industry, where currently there is no adequate solution. We intend to use recent advances in hardware to cope with these demanding requirements. More specifically, we plan to use Ternary Content-Addressable Memories (TCAMs), which become standard commodity in contemporary network devices. TCAMs can compare a key against all rules in a memory in parallel and thus provide high throughput. We believ

990 400 €

Start date: 2010-11-01, End date: 2016-10-31