Project acronym AGRIWESTMED
Project Origins and spread of agriculture in the south-western Mediterranean region
Researcher (PI) Maria Leonor Peña Chocarro
Host Institution (HI) AGENCIA ESTATAL CONSEJO SUPERIOR DEINVESTIGACIONES CIENTIFICAS
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH6, ERC-2008-AdG
Summary This project focuses on one of the most fascinating events of the long history of the human species: the origins and spread of agriculture. Research over the past 40 years has provided an invaluable dataset on crop domestication and the spread of agriculture into Europe. However, despite the enormous advances in research there are important areas that remain almost unexplored, some of immense interest. This is the case of the western Mediterranean region from where our knowledge is still limited (Iberian Peninsula) or almost inexistent (northern Morocco). The last few years have witnessed a considerable increase in archaeobotany and the effort of a group of Spanish researchers working together in different aspects of agriculture has started to produce the first results. My proposal will approach the study of the arrival of agriculture to the western Mediterranean by exploring different interrelated research areas. The project involves the
application of different techniques (analysis of charred plant remains, pollen and non-pollen microfossils, phytoliths, micro-wear analyses, isotopes, soil micromorphology, genetics, and ethnoarchaeology) which will help to define the emergence and spread of agriculture in the area, its likely place of origin, its main technological attributes as well as the range crop husbandry practices carried out. The interaction between the different approaches and the methodologies involved will allow achieving a greater understanding of the type of agriculture that characterized the first farming communities in the most south-western part of Europe.
Summary
This project focuses on one of the most fascinating events of the long history of the human species: the origins and spread of agriculture. Research over the past 40 years has provided an invaluable dataset on crop domestication and the spread of agriculture into Europe. However, despite the enormous advances in research there are important areas that remain almost unexplored, some of immense interest. This is the case of the western Mediterranean region from where our knowledge is still limited (Iberian Peninsula) or almost inexistent (northern Morocco). The last few years have witnessed a considerable increase in archaeobotany and the effort of a group of Spanish researchers working together in different aspects of agriculture has started to produce the first results. My proposal will approach the study of the arrival of agriculture to the western Mediterranean by exploring different interrelated research areas. The project involves the
application of different techniques (analysis of charred plant remains, pollen and non-pollen microfossils, phytoliths, micro-wear analyses, isotopes, soil micromorphology, genetics, and ethnoarchaeology) which will help to define the emergence and spread of agriculture in the area, its likely place of origin, its main technological attributes as well as the range crop husbandry practices carried out. The interaction between the different approaches and the methodologies involved will allow achieving a greater understanding of the type of agriculture that characterized the first farming communities in the most south-western part of Europe.
Max ERC Funding
1 545 169 €
Duration
Start date: 2009-04-01, End date: 2013-03-31
Project acronym ALREG
Project Analysing Learning in Regulatory Governance
Researcher (PI) Claudio Radaelli
Host Institution (HI) THE UNIVERSITY OF EXETER
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH2, ERC-2008-AdG
Summary This four-year interdisciplinary project addresses the question what has been learned through the use of better regulation ? Better regulation is a flagship policy on the Lisbon agenda for growth and jobs. Its aims are to provide new governance architectures for law-making, to increase the competitiveness of the regulatory environment, and to secure wide social legitimacy for multi-level systems of rules. Whilst most of the research has looked at how better regulation is changing, this project will produce findings on what has changed because of better regulation. Theoretically, the project will use (and significantly improve on) theories of policy learning. Empirically, it will cover Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, the UK and the EU including multi-level analysis and analysis by sector of regulation. Methodologically, the project will draw on comparative analysis of types of learning, experiments with regulatory policy-makers in six countries and the European Commission, large-n analysis of impact assessments, backward-mapping of legislation (to appraise the role played by better regulation in the formulation or laws in the UK and the EU), meta-analysis of case-studies and co-production of knowledge with better regulation officers. Dissemination will target both stakeholders (i.e., policy officers, civil society organizations, and business federations) and academic conferences in political science, law, and risk analysis, with a major research monograph to be completed in year 4 and a final interdisciplinary conference.
Summary
This four-year interdisciplinary project addresses the question what has been learned through the use of better regulation ? Better regulation is a flagship policy on the Lisbon agenda for growth and jobs. Its aims are to provide new governance architectures for law-making, to increase the competitiveness of the regulatory environment, and to secure wide social legitimacy for multi-level systems of rules. Whilst most of the research has looked at how better regulation is changing, this project will produce findings on what has changed because of better regulation. Theoretically, the project will use (and significantly improve on) theories of policy learning. Empirically, it will cover Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, the UK and the EU including multi-level analysis and analysis by sector of regulation. Methodologically, the project will draw on comparative analysis of types of learning, experiments with regulatory policy-makers in six countries and the European Commission, large-n analysis of impact assessments, backward-mapping of legislation (to appraise the role played by better regulation in the formulation or laws in the UK and the EU), meta-analysis of case-studies and co-production of knowledge with better regulation officers. Dissemination will target both stakeholders (i.e., policy officers, civil society organizations, and business federations) and academic conferences in political science, law, and risk analysis, with a major research monograph to be completed in year 4 and a final interdisciplinary conference.
Max ERC Funding
948 448 €
Duration
Start date: 2009-09-01, End date: 2013-09-30
Project acronym BRIO
Project Bounded Rationality in Industrial Organization
Researcher (PI) Ran Spiegler
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH1, ERC-2008-AdG
Summary "Economists' modern understanding of the functioning of markets is based on the behavioral assumption of individual rationality. Market agents are assumed to hold well-defined preferences and have perfect ability to draw Bayesian inferences in accordance with correct knowledge of the market model and market equilibrium. This research proposal is based on the premise that bounded rationality on the part of consumers is potentially a major source of market friction. My objective is to develop general theoretical tools to investigate this intuition, and to examine whether these tools can be insightfully applied to realistic market settings. So far, the literature on the subject has progressed as a sequence of specific models that capture one aspect of consumer psychology at a time. The challenge is to synthesize and generalize these models into flexible theoretical frameworks for modelling market interaction between profit-maximizing firms and boundedly rational consumers. Hopefully, various aspects of consumer psychology can be embedded into these frameworks, so that analytic results can be stated in terms of general, abstract properties of consumer behavior, rather than in terms of specific psychological effects. In turn, this general analysis is expected to lead to novel applications. Here are some of the general questions that I hope to address. Can we view certain aspects of firms' pricing and marketing strategies as responses to consumers' bounded rationality? To what extent are boundedly rational consumers vulnerable to exploitation by firms? Does competition protect them from exploitation? Does interaction between firms and boundedly rational consumers give rise to inefficiencies, and how are these affected by competition? What is the impact of various regulatory interventions in this context? Do market forces lead firms to ""educate"" or ""debias"" boundedly rational consumers? Does greater consumer rationality imply more competitive industry profits?"
Summary
"Economists' modern understanding of the functioning of markets is based on the behavioral assumption of individual rationality. Market agents are assumed to hold well-defined preferences and have perfect ability to draw Bayesian inferences in accordance with correct knowledge of the market model and market equilibrium. This research proposal is based on the premise that bounded rationality on the part of consumers is potentially a major source of market friction. My objective is to develop general theoretical tools to investigate this intuition, and to examine whether these tools can be insightfully applied to realistic market settings. So far, the literature on the subject has progressed as a sequence of specific models that capture one aspect of consumer psychology at a time. The challenge is to synthesize and generalize these models into flexible theoretical frameworks for modelling market interaction between profit-maximizing firms and boundedly rational consumers. Hopefully, various aspects of consumer psychology can be embedded into these frameworks, so that analytic results can be stated in terms of general, abstract properties of consumer behavior, rather than in terms of specific psychological effects. In turn, this general analysis is expected to lead to novel applications. Here are some of the general questions that I hope to address. Can we view certain aspects of firms' pricing and marketing strategies as responses to consumers' bounded rationality? To what extent are boundedly rational consumers vulnerable to exploitation by firms? Does competition protect them from exploitation? Does interaction between firms and boundedly rational consumers give rise to inefficiencies, and how are these affected by competition? What is the impact of various regulatory interventions in this context? Do market forces lead firms to ""educate"" or ""debias"" boundedly rational consumers? Does greater consumer rationality imply more competitive industry profits?"
Max ERC Funding
1 098 637 €
Duration
Start date: 2008-11-01, End date: 2014-10-31
Project acronym BRSCDP-TEA
Project Bounded rationality and social concerns in decision processes: theory, experiments, and applications
Researcher (PI) Massimo Marinacci
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITA COMMERCIALE LUIGI BOCCONI
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH1, ERC-2008-AdG
Summary In the field of economics, individual decision making is the basic building block for studying complex environments such as markets, political systems, and social dynamics. Individual decision making is embodied in the neoclassical economically rational agent, whose only concern is the maximization of utility from his own material consumption. Two qualities of this agent are especially important for the research we will undertake: He has perfect understanding of the problems he faces - today and in the future - and unbounded computational ability to solve them. He also has no regard for the consumption of other members of the society or for their feelings about his actions. Huge empirical and experimental evidence shows that departure from these qualities is robust and significant. The failure of the existing models to incorporate bounded rationality and social concerns has proven critical in socially relevant and complex situations such as lifetime consumption and saving, taxation and expenditure policy, labour search and wage determination. The objective of this project is to bring these phenomena into the framework of neoclassical economics, to test their implications, and to tackle important applications. A novel and central feature of our approach is the attempt to retain the parsimonious methodological approach of economic modelling, which has scored groundbreaking successes in matters such as the design of auctions, markets, contracts, and voting mechanisms. Our project envisions the development of theory on individual decision making, the use of experiments to illuminate and test the theory, and the concrete application of theory - mainly to financial markets. The project will push the frontiers of the understanding of the above mentioned socially relevant situations. The explanatory power of our approach will be guaranteed by the continuous feed-back between theory and evidence- experimental and neuroexperimental, and by a departure from ad hoc modelling.
Summary
In the field of economics, individual decision making is the basic building block for studying complex environments such as markets, political systems, and social dynamics. Individual decision making is embodied in the neoclassical economically rational agent, whose only concern is the maximization of utility from his own material consumption. Two qualities of this agent are especially important for the research we will undertake: He has perfect understanding of the problems he faces - today and in the future - and unbounded computational ability to solve them. He also has no regard for the consumption of other members of the society or for their feelings about his actions. Huge empirical and experimental evidence shows that departure from these qualities is robust and significant. The failure of the existing models to incorporate bounded rationality and social concerns has proven critical in socially relevant and complex situations such as lifetime consumption and saving, taxation and expenditure policy, labour search and wage determination. The objective of this project is to bring these phenomena into the framework of neoclassical economics, to test their implications, and to tackle important applications. A novel and central feature of our approach is the attempt to retain the parsimonious methodological approach of economic modelling, which has scored groundbreaking successes in matters such as the design of auctions, markets, contracts, and voting mechanisms. Our project envisions the development of theory on individual decision making, the use of experiments to illuminate and test the theory, and the concrete application of theory - mainly to financial markets. The project will push the frontiers of the understanding of the above mentioned socially relevant situations. The explanatory power of our approach will be guaranteed by the continuous feed-back between theory and evidence- experimental and neuroexperimental, and by a departure from ad hoc modelling.
Max ERC Funding
1 399 800 €
Duration
Start date: 2009-01-01, End date: 2013-12-31
Project acronym BSMOXFORD
Project Physics Beyond the Standard Model at the LHC and with Atom Interferometers
Researcher (PI) Savas Dimopoulos
Host Institution (HI) EUROPEAN ORGANIZATION FOR NUCLEAR RESEARCH
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), PE2, ERC-2008-AdG
Summary Elementary particle physics is entering a spectacular new era in which experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN will soon start probing some of the deepest questions in physics, such as: Why is gravity so weak? Do elementary particles have substructure? What is the origin of mass? Are there new dimensions? Can we produce black holes in the lab? Could there be other universes with different physical laws? While the LHC pushes the energy frontier, the unprecedented precision of Atom Interferometry, has pointed me to a new tool for fundamental physics. These experiments based on the quantum interference of atoms can test General Relativity on the surface of the Earth, detect gravity waves, and test short-distance gravity, charge quantization, and quantum mechanics with unprecedented precision in the next decade. This ERC Advanced grant proposal is aimed at setting up a world-leading European center for development of a deeper theory of fundamental physics. The next 10 years is the optimal time for such studies to benefit from the wealth of new data that will emerge from the LHC, astrophysical observations and atom interferometry. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for making ground-breaking progress, and will open up many new research horizons.
Summary
Elementary particle physics is entering a spectacular new era in which experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN will soon start probing some of the deepest questions in physics, such as: Why is gravity so weak? Do elementary particles have substructure? What is the origin of mass? Are there new dimensions? Can we produce black holes in the lab? Could there be other universes with different physical laws? While the LHC pushes the energy frontier, the unprecedented precision of Atom Interferometry, has pointed me to a new tool for fundamental physics. These experiments based on the quantum interference of atoms can test General Relativity on the surface of the Earth, detect gravity waves, and test short-distance gravity, charge quantization, and quantum mechanics with unprecedented precision in the next decade. This ERC Advanced grant proposal is aimed at setting up a world-leading European center for development of a deeper theory of fundamental physics. The next 10 years is the optimal time for such studies to benefit from the wealth of new data that will emerge from the LHC, astrophysical observations and atom interferometry. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for making ground-breaking progress, and will open up many new research horizons.
Max ERC Funding
2 200 000 €
Duration
Start date: 2009-05-01, End date: 2014-04-30
Project acronym CCC
Project Context, Content, and Compositionality
Researcher (PI) François Recanati
Host Institution (HI) CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE CNRS
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH4, ERC-2008-AdG
Summary Over the past fifteen years, I have argued that the effects of context on content go well beyond what is standardly acknowledged in semantics. This view is sometimes referred to as Contextualism or (more technically) Truth-Conditional Pragmatics (TCP). The key idea is that the effects of context on content need not be traceable to the linguistic material in the uttered sentence. Some effects are due to the linguistic material (e.g. to context-sensitive words or morphemes which trigger the search for contextual values), but others result from top-down or free pragmatic processes that take place not because the linguistic material demands it, but because the literal meaning of the sentence requires adjustment or elaboration ( modulation ) in order to determine a contextually admissible content for the speaker s utterance. In the literature, one often finds arguments to the effect that, if Contextualism is right, then systematic semantics becomes impossible. More precisely, the claim that is often made is that TCP is incompatible with the Principle of Compositionality, upon which any systematic semantics must be based. The aim of this project is to defend Contextualism/TCP by demonstrating that it is not incompatible with the project of constructing a systematic, compositional semantics for natural language. This demonstration is of importance given the current predicament in the philosophy of language. We are, as it were, caught in a dilemma : formal semanticists provide compelling arguments that natural language must be compositional, but contextualists offer no less compelling arguments to the effect that « sense modulation is essential to speech, because we use a (mor or less) fixed stock of lexemes to talk about an indefinite variety of things, situations, and experiences » (Recanati 2004 : 131). What are we to do, if modulation is incompatible with compositionality? Our aim is to show that it is not, and thereby to dissolve the alleged dilemma.
Summary
Over the past fifteen years, I have argued that the effects of context on content go well beyond what is standardly acknowledged in semantics. This view is sometimes referred to as Contextualism or (more technically) Truth-Conditional Pragmatics (TCP). The key idea is that the effects of context on content need not be traceable to the linguistic material in the uttered sentence. Some effects are due to the linguistic material (e.g. to context-sensitive words or morphemes which trigger the search for contextual values), but others result from top-down or free pragmatic processes that take place not because the linguistic material demands it, but because the literal meaning of the sentence requires adjustment or elaboration ( modulation ) in order to determine a contextually admissible content for the speaker s utterance. In the literature, one often finds arguments to the effect that, if Contextualism is right, then systematic semantics becomes impossible. More precisely, the claim that is often made is that TCP is incompatible with the Principle of Compositionality, upon which any systematic semantics must be based. The aim of this project is to defend Contextualism/TCP by demonstrating that it is not incompatible with the project of constructing a systematic, compositional semantics for natural language. This demonstration is of importance given the current predicament in the philosophy of language. We are, as it were, caught in a dilemma : formal semanticists provide compelling arguments that natural language must be compositional, but contextualists offer no less compelling arguments to the effect that « sense modulation is essential to speech, because we use a (mor or less) fixed stock of lexemes to talk about an indefinite variety of things, situations, and experiences » (Recanati 2004 : 131). What are we to do, if modulation is incompatible with compositionality? Our aim is to show that it is not, and thereby to dissolve the alleged dilemma.
Max ERC Funding
1 144 706 €
Duration
Start date: 2009-01-01, End date: 2013-12-31
Project acronym CITSEE
Project The Europeanisation of Citizenship in the Successor States of the Former Yugoslavia
Researcher (PI) Josephine Shaw
Host Institution (HI) THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH2, ERC-2008-AdG
Summary CITSEE is a comparative and contextualised study of the citizenship regimes of the seven successor states of the former Yugoslavia (SFRY) in their broader European context. It focuses on the relationship between how these regimes have developed after the disintegration of SFRY and the processes of re-integration occurring in the context of the enlargement of the European Union applied in the region. It makes use of the varied statuses under EU law of the SFRY successor states, of which only Slovenia is so far a Member State. The processes at the heart of the study include the effects of previous and prospective enlargements of the EU and the broader stabilisation and association processes. CITSEE uses methods which look at legal and institutional change in its broader political context and applies the broad approach of constitutional ethnography. It has national case studies and thematic case studies of key issues which have a transnational dimension, including the status of residents of the former SFRY Republics resident in other Republics at the moment of independence, dual and multiple nationality, the granting or denial of political rights for resident non-nationals and non-resident nationals, the status of minorities such as the Roma, gender issues arising in a citizenship context, and the impact of citizenship concepts on free movement and travel across borders. While CITSEE s objectives are not normative in nature, and are not intended to supply answers as to best or worst practices in relation to citizenship regimes, or to evaluate the impact of Europeanisation as negative or positive, none the less such an evaluative study is likely to be of interest not only to researchers, but also to NGOs and to policy-makers in the region and in the EU and other international institutions because it fills in many gaps in our current knowledge and provides improved evidence on the basis of which policies may be developed in the future.
Summary
CITSEE is a comparative and contextualised study of the citizenship regimes of the seven successor states of the former Yugoslavia (SFRY) in their broader European context. It focuses on the relationship between how these regimes have developed after the disintegration of SFRY and the processes of re-integration occurring in the context of the enlargement of the European Union applied in the region. It makes use of the varied statuses under EU law of the SFRY successor states, of which only Slovenia is so far a Member State. The processes at the heart of the study include the effects of previous and prospective enlargements of the EU and the broader stabilisation and association processes. CITSEE uses methods which look at legal and institutional change in its broader political context and applies the broad approach of constitutional ethnography. It has national case studies and thematic case studies of key issues which have a transnational dimension, including the status of residents of the former SFRY Republics resident in other Republics at the moment of independence, dual and multiple nationality, the granting or denial of political rights for resident non-nationals and non-resident nationals, the status of minorities such as the Roma, gender issues arising in a citizenship context, and the impact of citizenship concepts on free movement and travel across borders. While CITSEE s objectives are not normative in nature, and are not intended to supply answers as to best or worst practices in relation to citizenship regimes, or to evaluate the impact of Europeanisation as negative or positive, none the less such an evaluative study is likely to be of interest not only to researchers, but also to NGOs and to policy-makers in the region and in the EU and other international institutions because it fills in many gaps in our current knowledge and provides improved evidence on the basis of which policies may be developed in the future.
Max ERC Funding
2 240 000 €
Duration
Start date: 2009-04-01, End date: 2014-12-31
Project acronym CONANX
Project Consumer culture in an age of anxiety: political and moral economies of food
Researcher (PI) Peter Jackson
Host Institution (HI) THE UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH3, ERC-2008-AdG
Summary Food safety and security are high priority issues throughout Europe at present, the subject of intense government concern, public interest, media speculation and academic scrutiny. With few exceptions, academic research on food has been fragmented with too little interaction between food scientists, health researchers and social scientists. This application builds on the success of a recently completed research programme (Changing Families, Changing Food, 2005-8) which brought together an inter-disciplinary team of over 40 researchers from the food, health and social sciences to address the complex relationships between families and food which lie at the heart of current concerns about food safety and public health. The current proposal aims to take forward the findings of that programme regarding the socially embedded nature of contemporary food choice and to make a step change in our understanding of contemporary consumer anxiety through a focused and concerted programme of research on the political and moral economies of food. The project focuses on consumer anxieties about food at a range of geographic scales, from the global scale of international food markets to the domestic scale of individual households. By taking a whole chain approach -- examining food production and consumption at all points along the chain from farm to fork -- the findings of our research will enable a major advance in our understanding of contemporary anxieties around food, with tangible effects on public health (including the reduction of obesity, diabetes and coronary heart disease).
Summary
Food safety and security are high priority issues throughout Europe at present, the subject of intense government concern, public interest, media speculation and academic scrutiny. With few exceptions, academic research on food has been fragmented with too little interaction between food scientists, health researchers and social scientists. This application builds on the success of a recently completed research programme (Changing Families, Changing Food, 2005-8) which brought together an inter-disciplinary team of over 40 researchers from the food, health and social sciences to address the complex relationships between families and food which lie at the heart of current concerns about food safety and public health. The current proposal aims to take forward the findings of that programme regarding the socially embedded nature of contemporary food choice and to make a step change in our understanding of contemporary consumer anxiety through a focused and concerted programme of research on the political and moral economies of food. The project focuses on consumer anxieties about food at a range of geographic scales, from the global scale of international food markets to the domestic scale of individual households. By taking a whole chain approach -- examining food production and consumption at all points along the chain from farm to fork -- the findings of our research will enable a major advance in our understanding of contemporary anxieties around food, with tangible effects on public health (including the reduction of obesity, diabetes and coronary heart disease).
Max ERC Funding
1 684 460 €
Duration
Start date: 2009-01-01, End date: 2012-12-31
Project acronym CONTACTS
Project Traces of contact: Language contact studies and historical linguistics
Researcher (PI) Pieter Muysken
Host Institution (HI) STICHTING KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH5, ERC-2008-AdG
Summary This project aims to establish criteria by which results from language contact studies can be used to strengthen the field of historical linguistics. It does so by applying the scenario model for language contact studies to a number of concrete settings, which differ widely in their level of aggregation and dime depth: the languages of the Amazonian fringe in South America, the complex multilingual setting of the Republic of Suriname, the multilingual interaction of immigrant groups in the Netherlands, and two groups of multilingual individuals. New methods from structural phylogenetics are employed, and the same linguistic variables (TMA and evidentiality marking, argument realization) will be studied in the various projects. In the various projects, use will be made from a shared questionnaire, so that comparable data can be gathered. By applying the scenaio model at various levels of aggregation, a more principled link between language contact studies and historical linguistics can be established.
Summary
This project aims to establish criteria by which results from language contact studies can be used to strengthen the field of historical linguistics. It does so by applying the scenario model for language contact studies to a number of concrete settings, which differ widely in their level of aggregation and dime depth: the languages of the Amazonian fringe in South America, the complex multilingual setting of the Republic of Suriname, the multilingual interaction of immigrant groups in the Netherlands, and two groups of multilingual individuals. New methods from structural phylogenetics are employed, and the same linguistic variables (TMA and evidentiality marking, argument realization) will be studied in the various projects. In the various projects, use will be made from a shared questionnaire, so that comparable data can be gathered. By applying the scenaio model at various levels of aggregation, a more principled link between language contact studies and historical linguistics can be established.
Max ERC Funding
2 499 950 €
Duration
Start date: 2009-01-01, End date: 2013-12-31
Project acronym CRYTERION
Project Cryogenic Traps for Entanglement Research with Ions
Researcher (PI) Rainer Blatt
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITAET INNSBRUCK
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), PE2, ERC-2008-AdG
Summary Quantum computers offer a fundamentally new way of information processing. Within the scope of this proposal, quantum information processing with an ion trap quantum computer will be investigated. With the new combination of cryogenic technology and ion traps for quantum computing we intend to build a quantum information processor with strings of up to 50 ions and with two-dimensional ion arrays for an investigation of deterministic many-particle entanglement. The cryogenic traps will be applied for quantum simulations, for fundamental investigations concerning large-scale entanglement and for precision measurements enhanced by quantum metrology techniques employing entangled particles.
Summary
Quantum computers offer a fundamentally new way of information processing. Within the scope of this proposal, quantum information processing with an ion trap quantum computer will be investigated. With the new combination of cryogenic technology and ion traps for quantum computing we intend to build a quantum information processor with strings of up to 50 ions and with two-dimensional ion arrays for an investigation of deterministic many-particle entanglement. The cryogenic traps will be applied for quantum simulations, for fundamental investigations concerning large-scale entanglement and for precision measurements enhanced by quantum metrology techniques employing entangled particles.
Max ERC Funding
2 200 000 €
Duration
Start date: 2008-12-01, End date: 2013-11-30
