D-PHYS News

Researchers in the Laboratory for Solid State Physics at ETH Zurich found evidence that bilayer graphene quantum dots may host a promising new type of quantum bit based on so-called valley states.

Klaus Ensslin received a Golden Owl award for his teaching activities in the Department of Physics. Every year, the ETH Zurich Student Association (VSETH) honours lecturers whose excellent teaching stands out with this award.

Researchers at ETH have put a crystal into a quantum superposition state and measured for how long quantum effects in the vibrations of the crystal lasted. Such measurements are important for putting bounds on possible modifications of quantum theory that could explain why we do not see quantum features in everyday life.

Tobias Donner, Senior Scientist and lecturer in the Quantum Optics Group at the Institute for Quantum Electronics, has received a SERI-financed ERC Consolidator Grant. He plans to use the funding to explore the fundamental principles behind the interaction between quantum many-body systems and light.

Letting your curiosity run free, asking a thousand questions and learning something new. On 17 June 2022, the Department of Physics at ETH Zurich welcomed several thousand guests at the summer festival of science on the Hönggerberg campus, the Night of Physics 2022.

Systems in which mechanical motion is controlled at the level of individual quanta are emerging as a promising quantum-technology platform. New experimental work now establishes how quantum properties of such systems can be measured without destroying the quantum state — a key ingredient for tapping the full potential of mechanical quantum systems.

Women scientists in photon science talk about their research and the impact their work has on the field. From the perspective of early career to established researchers, they also talk about necessary skills, career steps, and role models. They are members of the Swiss Society for Photon Science, an academic society that represents and supports scientists active in the many different fields of photon science.

14 April 2021 is World Quantum Day! On the occasion of the launch of this initiative, the Quantum Center, ETH Zurich invites you, your family and friends to an online interview with Professors Yiwen Chu and Renato Renner, moderated by doctoral student Chiara Decaroli.

The first demonstration of an approach that inverts the standard paradigm of scanning probe microscopy raises the prospect of force sensing at the fundamental limit.

Yiwen Chu researches new ways of connecting quantum technologies, with the aim of creating a quantum telecommunications network for the exchange and storage of quantum information.

Two research projects with ETH Zurich involvement have been awarded one of the highly coveted ERC Synergy Grants, including a project of ETH physicist Klaus Ensslin and colleagues in France, Canada and Israel, who will work towards measuring entropy and other thermodynamic properties of correlated quantum states in mesoscopic systems.

ETH has once again been highly successful in the awarding of this year’s ERC Starting Grants for young researchers, with the European Research Council (ERC) approving a total of CHF 21.4 million in funding for 12 ETH project submissions, among them those of physicists Yiwen Chu and Judit Szulágyi.

In combined theoretical and experimental work, ETH physicists introduce and demonstrate a novel mechanism for electron optics in two-dimensional solid-state systems. The discovery opens up a route to engineering quantum-optical phenomena in a variety of materials and devices.

ETH researchers are normally found in the lab. "ETH Globe" asked researchers from the Department of Physics what it’s like working from home.

Materials that combine topological electronic properties and quantum magnetism are of high current interest, for the quantum many-body physics that can unfold in them and for possible applications in electronic components. For one such material, ETH physicists have now established the microscopic mechanism linking magnetism and electronic-band topology.

At its last meeting, the ETH Board appointed a total of 19 new professors at the request of the President of ETH Zurich, Joël Mesot. Among them are five appointments at the Department of Physics.

The “Swiss Young Physicists' Tournament” is a physics competition for young physics enthusiasts from all over Switzerland. Alisa Miloglyadova was recently one of them and, together with the physics teacher Patrik Weber, is now leading a group of twenty new participants to the SYPT Physics Week on the Hönggerberg campus of ETH Zurich. There, scientists offer interested parties a broad insight into the Department of Physics.

From the International Women’s Day in March 2019 to March 2020, the Office of Equal Opportunities at ETH Zurich “Equal!” is portraying 12 female assistant professors. They work in different fields of research, come from different countries and have different personalities. With their diversity, they enrich ETH Zurich.

Structures known as ‘time crystals’ — which repeat in time as conventional crystals repeat in space — have recently captured the interest and imagination of researchers across disciplines. The concept has emerged from the context of quantum many-body systems, but ETH physicists have now developed a versatile framework that clarifies connections to classical works dating back nearly two centuries, thus providing a unifying platform to explore seemingly dissimilar phenomena.

In quasiparticles known as polaritons, states of light and matter are strongly coupled. The group of Ataç İmamoğlu has now developed a new approach to study nonlinear optical properties of polaritons in strongly correlated electronic states. In doing so, they opened up fresh perspectives for exploring both ingredients of the polariton: novel functionalities for photonic devices and fundamental insight into exotic states of matter.

For the first time three units of ETH Zurich Hönggerberg jointly organised a tour for 40 students of the Kallipolis Lyceum Piraeus and their teachers. This gave the guests wonderful insight into the research location ETH Hönggerberg, with an introduction to ETH Zurich followed by guided tours through the Departments of Biology and Physics.

ETH researchers had excellent results in the issuing of ERC grants: they were awarded 10 Consolidator Grants in the amount of 24 million Swiss francs for their research. Among the grantees are the three physicists Paolo Crivelli, Christian Degen and Jonathan Home.  

Optical measurements by an international team led by ETH physicist Leonardo Degiorgi provide unprecedented insight into the make-up of the enigmatic nematic order in iron-based superconductors.

As part of its focus topic "Venturing into the unknown — How fundamental research creates options for the future", ETH Globereports on the  contributions of ETH physicists to the field of quantum computation, and to other areas where fundamental research already had a lasting effect.

A semiconductor device fabricated in the group of Werner Wegscheider has provided the basis for a quantum simulation of the so-called Fermi–Hubbard model, a key concept in condensed-matter physics. This advance towards experimentally exploring quantum many-body physics on a solid-state platform has been just been published in the journal Nature.

In a collaboration of three groups at the Department of Physics, a device has been created that strongly couples quantum states of light and matter. This hybrid system opens up novel routes to combining the advantages of different quantum platforms — and to a host of possible applications.

20 high-school students with a passion for physics had a chance to experience modern research in two large laboratory complexes of the Department of Physics. In the Laboratory for Solid State Physics, they visted the Advanced Semiconductor Quantum Materials group, and in the Institute for Particle Physics the Laboratory of Ion Beam Physics.

The ETH Board appointed three new professors and awarded the title of Professor to five recipients upon application of ETH President Lino Guzzella. Among them are Christian Degen, new Associate Professor of Spin Physics, and Aude Gehrmann-De Ridder and Vadim Geshkenbein, new Adjunct Professors at the Departement of Physics.

ETH Globe puts five questions to ETH physics professor Werner Wegscheider.

ETH physics professor Andreas Vaterlaus, Vice-Rector for Curriculum Development, and Daniel Halter, head of the Educational Development and Technology unit, talk about the continued development of teaching at ETH.

ETH physicist Klaus Ensslin plays his part in the EU Graphene project.

Physics of New Materials: Have a look into labs and scientific work of one of the 40 scientific groups at the Department of Physics.