news 2015

Pole dancing water molecules - Researchers at the TU Wien have seen this remarkable phenomenon on the surface of an important technological material. Perovskites are materials used in batteries, fuel cells, and electronic components, and occur in nature as minerals. Despite their important role in technology, little is known about the reactivity of their surfaces.

A team of international researchers performed an experiment in the Vienna Hofburg to observe quantum entanglement with unprecedented certainty. Researchers in Anton Zeilinger's group from the Quantum Optics, Quantum Nanophysics and Quantum Information division of the University of Vienna physics department and from the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) Vienna of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (OeAW), in an international collaboration, have demonstrated a definitive confirmation of quantum entanglement.

Theoretical physicists in Innsbruck have proposed a scalable quantum computer architecture. The new model, developed by Wolfgang Lechner, Philipp Hauke and Peter Zoller, overcomes fundamental limitations of programmability in current approaches that aim at solving real-world general optimization problems by exploiting quantum mechanics.

Scientists at the Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien) have figured out how a platinum catalyst works. Its remarkable properties are not just due to the platinum, the iron-oxide substrate beneath also plays a role. Left: Tiny platinum nanoparticles on an iron oxide surface. center: H2 gas leads to trenches in the surface.

Quantum physics tell us that even massive particles can behave like waves, as if they could be in several places at once. This phenomenon is typically proven in the diffraction of a matter wave at a grating. In a European collaboration, researchers carried this idea to the extreme and observed the delocalization of molecules at the thinnest possible grating, a mask milled into a single layer of atoms.

A team of physicists from the University of Vienna and the Austrian Academy of Sciences have demonstrated a new quantum computation scheme in which operations occur without a well-defined order. The researchers led by Philip Walther and Caslav Brukner used this effect to accomplish a task more efficiently than a standard quantum computer.

Plants and bacteria make use of sunlight with remarkably high efficiency: nine out of ten absorbed light particles are being put to use in an ordinary bacterium. For years, it has been a pressing question of modern research whether or not effects from quantum physics are responsible for this outstanding performance of natural light harvesters.

[ Florian Aigner A theoretical trick allows scientists to describe quantum states of thousands of atoms. If standard methods were used, all storage capacity in the world would not be enough to do this. For a long time, quantum experiments were only carried out with a small number of particles. Even the behaviour of single atoms or molecules can be very hard to describe.

[ Florian Aigner Nanostructures etched into the surface: TU Wien develops a new processing technology to improve the electrical properties of glass ceramic circuit boards As you ease your foot off the accelerator, a radar sensor detects how far away you are from the other cars and intelligently adjusts your speed appropriately.

Scientists from the Vaziri lab at the Vienna Biocenter (Austria), together with colleagues at the Institute for Biophysical Dynamics at the University of Chicago, have developed a method using infrared spectroscopy and atomistic modeling that would allow to better understand the mechanism behind the extreme ion selectivity and transport properties in ion channels.

In the journal Physical Review Letters, Gerhard Kirchmair's and Oriol Romero-Isart's research team has presented a new proposal for the coupling between a micro-mechanic oscillator and a superconducting quantum circuit. The experiment will soon be implemented in Innsbruck, offering new insights into the quantum properties of macroscopic mechanical systems.

A quantum network requires efficient interfaces over which information can be transferred from matter to light and back. In the current issue of Physical Review Letters, Innsbruck physicists led by Rainer Blatt and Tracy Northup show how this information transfer can be optimized by taking advantage of a collective quantum phenomenon.