Quantum technologies: the second quantum revolution

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Quantum mechanics is at the basis of all present-day information and communication technologies: to name just two examples, transistors and lasers would be impossible to build without understanding the quantum behaviour of matter and light. But the control of individual quantum systems has long been considered only a “thought experiment”, something only possible in theory.

In 1952, Erwin Schrödinger wrote in The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science:
“One never realizes experiments with a single electron or an atom or a small molecule. In thought experiments, one assumes that sometimes this is possible; invariably, this leads to ridiculous consequences... One may say that one does not realize experiments with single particles, more than one raises ichthyosaurs in the zoo.”

Among the “ridiculous consequences” of today’s ability to experiment with single particles there are many potential and a few already available applications of quantum physics to various fields of technology, from secure communications to ultra-high precision sensing and metrology, and from extremely powerful computers to the simulation of complex materials.

Prof. Dr. Tommaso Calarco has pioneered the application of quantum optimal control methods to quantum computation and to many-body quantum systems. Currently the Director of the Institute for Quantum Control of the Peter Grünberg Institute at Forschungszentrum Jülich and Professor of Quantum Information at the Institute of
Theoretical Physics of the University of Cologne, Tommaso received his PhD at the University of Ferrara and started to work as a postdoc in the group of P. Zoller at the University of Innsbruck. He was appointed as a Senior Researcher at the BEC Centre in Trento in 2004 and as a Professor for Physics at the University of Ulm in 2007, where he then became Director of the Institute for Complex Quantum Systems and of the Centre for Integrated Quantum Science and Technology. He has authored in 2016 the Quantum Manifesto, which initiated the
European Commission’s Quantum Flagship initiative, and is currently the Chairman of one of the Flagship’s Governing Bodies: The Quantum Community Network (QCN). In 2020, together with the QCN, he has launched an initiative towards the creation of a consortium of European quantum industries, which has been legally established in 2021 under the name of European Quantum Industry Consortium (QuIC).