Experimental physicist Maximilian Zanner from Gerhard Kirchmair's research group has been awarded the IQOQI Dissertation Prize 2022. Worth 1,000 euros, it has been awarded since 2013 as a recognition for outstanding scientific achievements in the field of quantum physics. We warmly congratulate Mr. Zanner on this success!
In his dissertation, Maximilian Zanner explores how quantum states can be protected from the environment in order to create long-lived quantum memories. This is achieved by exploiting the interaction between multiple qubits which yields the emergence of so-called dark states. In contrast to the single qubit states, these dark states decouple from the environment and thus cannot decay to the ground state, effectively extending the lifetime of the excited state. However, the long-lived nature of the dark state comes at the cost of losing the ability of coherent control. The results show that by extending the experimental system, it is possible to regain control over the dark state and use it as a manipulatable quantum information storage. This paves the way for investigating quantum many-body systems in dissipative environments as well as creating communication channels between two physically separated quantum computers.
Award for outstanding achievements
The IQOQI Thesis Award is presented to promising young physicists at the Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information in Innsbruck for their outstanding achievements in the field of quantum physics. Endowed with a prize money of 1,000 Euros, it recognizes excellent research of graduates of PhD or doctoral studies at the University of Innsbruck. Following Philipp Schindler and Simon Stellmer (2013), Alexander Glätzle (2014), Albert Frisch (2015), Florian Meinert (2016), Petar Jurcevic (2018), Simon Baier (2019), Andreas Elben (2020) and Christine Maier (2021), we are happy to this year present Maximilian Zanner of Gerhard Kirchmair’s research group with the prize for his dissertation "Coherent Control of Multi-Qubit Dark States in Waveguide Quantum Electrodynamics", submitted in 2022. The award ceremony took place on April 11, 2023.
About the awardee
Maximilian Zanner studied physics at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and completed his master's degree in 2016 with his thesis "Towards non-reciprocity in 3D waveguide electrodynamics". In spring 2017 he moved to Innsbruck and began his doctoral studies in the research group of Gerhard Kirchmair at the University of Innsbruck and the Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Innsbruck. His research results are summarized in the dissertation "Coherent control of multi-qubit dark states in waveguide quantum electrodynamics". Since the end of 2022, Mr. Zanner has been working at Quantum Machines on the integration of quantum processors in high-performance computing centres.