Experimental physicist Christine Maier from Rainer Blatt's research group will receive the IQOQI Thesis Award 2021. The award, endowed with 1,000 euros, is being presented this year for the eighth time and recognizes scientific excellence in the field of quantum physics.
In her dissertation, Christine Maier documents experiments on a quantum simulator with up to 20 ions. On the one hand, her investigations dealt with the quantification of entanglement as well as the state determination of large, locally correlated quantum states, and on the other hand, she shows the quantum simulation of quantum transport through a network of ten qubits. In another part of her work, Maier describes experimental realizations of variational quantum simulation. In doing so, her team was able to demonstrate the previously infeasible quantum simulation of the Schwinger model with up to 20 qubits. Determining the algorithmic error and comparing the energy states of the Schwinger model allowed to prove the self-consistency of the quantum simulator - a way to verify the results of the quantum simulator.
Award for outstanding achievements
The Thesis Award is presented to promising young physicists at the Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) in Innsbruck for their outstanding achievements. The IQOQI Thesis Award is endowed with a prize money of 1,000 euros and is awarded to graduates of PhD or doctoral studies at the University of Innsbruck who have made excellent scientific achievements in the field of quantum physics. After Philipp Schindler and Simon Stellmer (2013), Alexander Glätzle (2014), Albert Frisch (2015), Florian Meinert (2016), Petar Jurcevic (2018), Simon Baier (2019) and Andreas Elben (2020), Christine Maier from the research group of Rainer Blatt now receives this award for her dissertation "A quantum simulator with long strings of trapped ions" submitted in 2020. The prize will be awarded in a ceremony in March.
Profile
Christine Maier studied physics at the University of Innsbruck and completed her master's degree in 2013. She conducted research in the group of Rainer Blatt and Christian Roos at the Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Innsbruck until she received her doctorate. Now she works at the spin-off company Alpine Quantum Technologie (AQT) in Innsbruck.