Research Highlights

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.

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.

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.

In quasiparticles known as polaritons, states of light and matter are strongly coupled. The group of Prof. 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.

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.

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.