D-PHYS News

Visitors at this year's ETH Information Days learned what it means to study physics through conversations with current students and lectures given by members of the department.

Physicists Andreas Eggenberger and Marius Simon demonstrated some exciting experiments during this year's Long Night of the Zurich Museums at focusTerra: they debunked the colour of gold, created a rainbow in the middle of the night and let a green laser beam take a balloon to its breaking point.

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.

EPFL researchers have collaborated with colleagues at ETH Zurich and Harvard University on a new thin-film circuit which, when connected to a laser beam, produces finely tailorable terahertz-frequency waves. The device opens up a world of potential applications in optics and telecommunications.

Traffic obstructions are not only a nuisance for our everyday mobility; they can also have negative consequences for the smallest particles such as electrons. If physicists want to study very fast dynamics in matter using soft X-rays, a clear path for electrons is required.

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.

In 2022, the Swiss team won the World Physics Championship, the International Young Physicists' Tournament (IYPT). Singapore and Poland came second and third.

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.

Quantum computers and quantum mechanics are currently the focus of intensive research, including at ETH Zurich, and are also increasingly becoming topics in the media. In this domain, researchers work with the tiniest of particles daily, with a particular emphasis on experimentally realizing a new era of information technologies with capabilities beyond those available to us today. But how can this world of quantum physics be experienced outside the laboratory?

The Swiss National Science Foundation's SNSF professorships are intended for highly qualified young researchers who aspire to a permanent professorship. Over  six years, quantum researcher Oded Zilberberg conducted his research project as an assistant professor at the Department of Physics at ETH Zurich under this SNSF funding scheme.

An international team of researchers with participation of the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS, ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich has succeeded in capturing an image of a very special planet. No known planet orbits a hotter or more massive star system. Some astronomers even considered it impossible for planets to exist in such an environment.

In 2021, ESA selected three themes from a hundred proposals for its largest science missions, “Voyage 2050”. The National Centre of Competence in Research, or NCCR, “PlanetS” with its partner institutions ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich proposed two of the three chosen topics. The NCCR “PlanetS” is led by the two home institutions, the University of Bern and the University of Geneva.

The “Nationale Zukunftstag” on 11 November is an important event at ETH Zurich. It offers many children the opportunity to get to know ETH Zurich from the inside. 17 different programmes were offered by various ETH units, some of which would have probably been of interest to adults, too.

Eugene Demler, quantum researcher and professor at ETH Zurich, was honoured for his theoretical work on quantum fluids and solids, especially for his contributions to the study of ultracold atoms in optical lattices.

We are delighted to announce that this year's Christophe Plantin Prize has been awarded to Dr. Veerle Sterken for her pioneering research into interstellar dust in the solar system.

Prof. Lukas Novotny, Dr. Martin Frimmer, and Dr. Gabriele Rainò discuss the approach they are pursuing at ETH Zürich to provide students with an education in quantum engineering at Master's level.

The National Academy of Sciences (USA) has announced the election of 30 international members in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in research, among them ETH physicist Ursula Keller. 

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.

Ursula Keller, professor at the Institute for Quantum Electronics, has received one of the 55 Proof of Concept (PoC) grants awarded by the European Research Council (ERC) in its latest funding round. Kicking off on 1 March 2021, the grant will enable her and her group to explore novel commercial applications of the dual comb-laser spectroscopy.

ETH professor Renato Renner is one of the world’s leading theoreticians in quantum information science. He talks about the latest developments. Renato Renner’s group focuses on the question of how the processing and transmission of information relates to physical laws.

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.

How can we protect communications against 'eavesdropping' if we don’t trust the devices used in the process? This is one of the main questions in quantum-cryptography research. Researchers at the University of Basel and ETH Zurich have now developed the theoretical groundwork for a communication protocol that guarantees one hundred percent privacy.

Well-controlled shuttling of ions through laser beams should enable scalable quantum computing.

From 17 to 19 February 2016, the conference "X-ray View of Black Hole Activity in the Local Universe" takes place on the ETH Hönggerberg campus.