ERC FUNDED PROJECTS

This project aims at designing novel hybrid nanophotonic devices comprising metallic nanostructures and active elements such as dye molecules or colloidal quantum dots. Three core objectives, each going far beyond the state of the art, shall be tackled: (i) Metamaterials containing gain materials: Metamaterials introduce magnetism to the optical frequency range and hold promise to create entirely novel devices for light manipulation. Since present day metamaterials are extremely absorptive, it is of utmost importance to fight losses. The ground-breaking approach of this proposal is to incorporate fluorescing species into the nanoscale metallic metastructures in order to compensate losses by stimulated emission. (ii) The second objective exceeds the ansatz of compensating losses and will reach out for lasing action. Individual metallic nanostructures such as pairs of nanoparticles will form novel and unusual nanometre sized resonators for laser action. State of the art microresonators still have a volume of at least half of the wavelength cubed. Noble metal nanoparticle resonators scale down this volume by a factor of thousand allowing for truly nanoscale coherent light sources. (iii) A third objective concerns a substantial improvement of nonlinear effects. This will be accomplished by drastically sharpened resonances of nanoplasmonic devices surrounded by active gain materials. An interdisciplinary team of PhD students and a PostDoc will be assembled, each scientist being uniquely qualified to cover one of the expertise fields: Design, spectroscopy, and simulation. The project s outcome is twofold: A substantial expansion of fundamental understanding of nanophotonics and practical devices such as nanoscopic lasers and low loss metamaterials.

1 494 756 €

Start date: 2010-10-01, End date: 2015-09-30

This project aims to develop a universal approach to angular momentum in quantum many-body systems based on the angulon quasiparticle recently discovered by the PI. We will establish a general theory of angulons in and out of equilibrium, and apply it to a variety of experimentally studied problems, ranging from chemical dynamics in solvents to solid-state systems (e.g. angular momentum transfer in the Einstein-de Haas effect and ultrafast magnetism). The concept of angular momentum is ubiquitous across physics, whether one deals with nuclear collisions, chemical reactions, or formation of galaxies. In the microscopic world, quantum rotations are described by non-commuting operators. This makes the angular momentum theory extremely involved, even for systems consisting of only a few interacting particles, such as gas-phase atoms or molecules. Furthermore, in most experiments the behavior of quantum particles is inevitably altered by a many-body environment of some kind. For example, molecular rotation – and therefore reactivity – depends on the presence of a solvent, electronic angular momentum in solids is coupled to lattice phonons, highly excited atomic levels can be perturbed by a surrounding ultracold gas. If approached in a brute-force fashion, understanding angular momentum in such systems is an impossible task, since a macroscopic number of particles is involved. Recently, the PI and his team have shown that this challenge can be met by introducing a new quasiparticle – the angulon. In 2017, the PI has demonstrated the existence of angulons by comparing his theory with 20 years of measurements on molecules rotating in superfluids. Most importantly, the angulon concept allows one to gain analytical insights inaccessible to the state-of-the-art techniques of condensed matter and chemical physics. The angulon approach holds the promise of opening up a new interdisciplinary research area with applications reaching far beyond what is proposed here.

1 499 588 €

Start date: 2019-02-01, End date: 2024-01-31

AQSuS aims at experimentally implementing analogue quantum simulation of interacting spin models in two-dimensional geometries. The proposed experimental approach paves the way to investigate a broad range of currently inaccessible quantum phenomena, for which existing analytical and numerical methods reach their limitations. Developing precisely controlled interacting quantum systems in 2D is an important current goal well beyond the field of quantum simulation and has applications in e.g. solid state physics, computing and metrology. To access these models, I propose to develop a novel circuit quantum-electrodynamics (cQED) platform based on the 3D transmon qubit architecture. This platform utilizes the highly engineerable properties and long coherence times of these qubits. A central novel idea behind AQSuS is to exploit the spatial dependence of the naturally occurring dipolar interactions between the qubits to engineer the desired spin-spin interactions. This approach avoids the complicated wiring, typical for other cQED experiments and reduces the complexity of the experimental setup. The scheme is therefore directly scalable to larger systems. The experimental goals are: 1) Demonstrate analogue quantum simulation of an interacting spin system in 1D & 2D. 2) Establish methods to precisely initialize the state of the system, control the interactions and readout single qubit states and multi-qubit correlations. 3) Investigate unobserved quantum phenomena on 2D geometries e.g. kagome and triangular lattices. 4) Study open system dynamics with interacting spin systems. AQSuS builds on my backgrounds in both superconducting qubits and quantum simulation with trapped-ions. With theory collaborators my young research group and I have recently published an article in PRB [9] describing and analysing the proposed platform. The ERC starting grant would allow me to open a big new research direction and capitalize on the foundations established over the last two years.

1 498 515 €

Start date: 2017-04-01, End date: 2022-03-31

New renewable energy source are highly needed to compensate exhausting fossil fuels reserves and reduce greenhouse gases emissions. Some species of algae have an interesting potential as feedstock for the production of biodiesel thanks to their ability to accumulate large amount of lipids. Strong research efforts are however needed to fulfil this potential and address many issues involving optimization of cultivation systems, biomass harvesting and algae genetic improvement. This proposal aims to address one of these issues, the optimization of algae light use efficiency. Light, in fact, provides the energy supporting algae growth and must be exploited with the highest possible efficiency to achieve sufficient productivity. In a photobioreactor algae are highly concentrated and this cause a inhomogeneous light distribution with a large fraction of the cells exposed to very low light or even in the dark. Algae are also actively mixed and they can abruptly move from dark to full illumination and vice versa. This proposal aims to assess how alternation of dark/light cycles affect algae growth and functionality of photosynthetic apparatus both in batch and continuous cultures. In collaboration with the Chemical Engineering department, experimental data will be exploited to build a model describing the photobioreactor, a fundamental tool to improve its design. The other main scope of this proposal is the isolation of genetically improved strains more suitable to the artificial environment of a photobioreactor. A first part of the work of setting up protocols for transformation will be followed by a second phase for generation and selection of mutants with altered photosynthetic performances. Transcriptome analyses in different light conditions will also be instrumental to identify genes to be targeted by genetic engineering.

1 257 600 €

Start date: 2012-10-01, End date: 2017-09-30