Starting from 1st May, Marco Genoni joined us as tenure-track assistant professor, funded by a “Rita-Levi Montalcini” fellowship for young researchers. Great news for Marco and for the group!
Congratulations! Keep up the good work!
Category Archives: Department of Physics
Quantum Expo
We are happy to launch a series of one-day workshops on Quantum Technology (Quantum Expo) where junior and senior scientists may interact on specific advanced topics at the edge of current research. Each workshop is devoted to a specific (hot!) topic in quantum technology and involves two complementary (or even contradictory) talks delivered by internationally recognized scientists. Each workshop also include one or two short talks delivered by junior scientists (not only from Milan Universities, submissions encouraged: contact us!)
Marina Samoylova awarded SPIE Scholarship
Our PhD student Marina Samoylova has been awarded a 2014 Optics and Photonics Education Scholarship by SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics. Her research interests are theoretical investigation of photonic band gaps in optical lattices and mode-locked Bloch oscillations in ring cavities filled with cold atoms. Congratulations, Marina! See also the SPIE press release.
New grant from the “Sviluppo UniMi” plan
Great news for AQM and the FIRB project “LiCHIS” – Stefano Olivares together with Dario Tamascelli (Department of Physics, University of Milan) received a one-year grant for the project “Generation, characterization and application of non-classical continuous-variable states for quantum information protocols” supported by the Department of Physics of the University of Milan through the “Sviluppo UniMi” plan.
The project aims to enhance a setup for the generation of squeezed sates of light, that is currently present in the Quantum Optics Laboratory at the Department of Physics, up to the application level in quantum information protocols. This will require theoretical, numerical and experimental efforts to reach the expected objectives. All members of the AQM group will be involved, but, among them, the synergy with Simone Cialdi that leads the Quantum Optics Laboratory will be one of the key ingredients for the success of the project.
Furthermore, as the third year of the “LiCHIS” project, coordinated by Stefano Olivares, is devoted to the advanced analysis of correlations in optical systems, the new grant will allow to extend the research to the field of continuous-variable non-classical states, such as the squeezed states, which are the building blocks to generate continuous-variable entangled states. This new opportunity (and challenge!) will indeed improve the final results of “LiCHIS”.
Experimental realization of quantum illumination
Another good news for AQM and “LiCHIS” project (FIRB 2010 – Futuro in Ricerca). A paper describing the first experimental realization of “quantum illumination”, proposed so far by S. Lloyd [Science 321, 1463–1465 (2008)], has been just published in PRL and received a comment on the journal Nature. The result has been achieved by the experimental Quantum Optics group at INRIM (L. Lopaeva, I. Ruo Berchera, I. Degiovanni, G. Brida) led by Marco Genovese and by our group at UniMi.
In brief, quantum illumination exploits quantum correlations (entanglement) in order to enhance the detection of a faint object in a high-intensity thermal background. The realization of the protocol has required not only experimental efforts, but also a thorough theoretical analysis to find the best scenario to implement the protocol taking into account the current technological resources.
The joint efforts by INRIM and UniMi have lead to a slightly different protocol with respect to the original one, but it has been proved for the first time that a quantum protocol can show clear advantages with respect to classical ones, i.e. based on classical correlations. Furthermore, it demonstrates that the common belief that the advantages of quantum technologies are hardly applicable in a real context, due to the fragility to noise and losses, is not general, thus challenging the prevalent paradigm and paving the way toward their practical application.
More details at http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v110/i15/e153603
Open Systems & Quantum Information Seminars
We are starting the new seminar series on “Open Systems & Quantum Information” at the Department of Physics of the University of Milan. You can find further information and the list of the past and forthcoming seminars in the section “QUANTUM SEMINARS“.
Post-doc position available
There is an opening for a two-year post doc position in our group. The research activities concern collective and single-particle phenomena investigated via advanced analytic methods plus classical and quantum numerical simulations. Multiple research lines in physics of matter focusing on fronteer problems concerning atoms, electrons and photons. (Codice tematica 013 – Docente Responsabile Nicola Manini). Details here.
Project LiCHIS
The FIRB project “LiCHIS – Light Correlations for High-precision Innovative Sensing”, lead by Stefano Olivares, officially started on March 8th, 2012. The project, supported by MIUR through the program “FIRB 2010 – Futuro in Ricerca”, involves three Research Units: one theoretical, the Milano Unit (at the Physics Department of the Università degli Studi di Milano) and two experimental, the Como Unit (at the Physics and Mathematics Department of the Università degli Studi dell’Insubria) and the Torino Unit (at I.N.Ri.M.). Within the Project, the Units will design and develop innovative, high precision measurement schemes based on the correlations existing between two or more beams of light.
See LiCHIS website for more details.