Andre’ Xuereb has been very recently interviewed by the Sunday Times of Malta. He discussed his research in optomechanics (including what he works on with some of the QTeQ members) and how it can be used to make a difference to the world by enabling direct light-light interfaces.
The interview, which obviously does not lack of the witty sense of humour of Andre’, is available at this link (unfortunately, there’s a paywall…). Way to go, Andre’!
Today, Gareth Cochrane passed successfully his viva with only minor corrections to his thesis.
Congratulations to Dr. Gareth, who will take a position as analyst at the Royal Bank of Scotland! Congratulations to Gareth (and Jim) on this success.
Matthew has published his first paper entitled: Dynamical symmetry breaking with optimal control: Reducing the number of pieces in Phys. Rev. B. The research, conducted in collaboration with Gabriele, has analysed the production of defects when a system crosses a phase transition. As predicted by the Kibble-Zurek mechanism, the rate of production of defects depends on the rate of change of the parameter driving the transition. By carefully tailoring the time-dependence of this parameter Matthew and Gabriele have shown that the number of defects can be drastically reduced by more than 40%. This research can be readily used in experiments of structural phase transitions of trapped ion crystals.
Ref.: Matthew J. M. Power and Gabriele De Chiara, Phys. Rev. B 88, 214106 (2013).
Margherita Zuppardo, long-term visitor of QTeQ, and Mauro Paternostro have published a research paper in the prestigious Phys. Rev. Lett. reporting the results of an international collaboration with University of Queensland and Nanyang Technological University of Singapore! The paper, which addresses the issue of distributing entanglement without the use of such a precious resource, has been picked as an “Editors’ Suggestion” by the Editors of Phys. Rev. Lett. and featured in a “Physics Viewpoint” article authored by Prof. Christine Silberhorn (University of Paderborn). Details of the work can be found at
A. Fedrizzi, et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 230504 (2013)
The Viewpoint commentary by Prof. Silberhorn can be found at
Ch. Silberhorn, Physics 6, 132 (2013)
PRL Editor Robert Garisto tweets about it as well.
The papers are free to read. Way to go, Margherita!!
Tony Apollaro has just published a paper in collaboration with Universita’ della Calabria, Universita’ di Firenze and Mauro at QTeQ. The paper, which deals with a strategy to effectively achieve a cut in an interacting spin-ring, digs deep into the statistical mechanics features of the system being addressed and shows that the behaviour of quantum correlations across the ring could be a faithful indicator of the cut.
Details on this work are found in
T. J. G. Apollaro, F. Plastina, L. Banchi, A. Cuccoli, R. Vaia, P. Verrucchi, M. Paternostro, Physical Review A 88, 052336 (2013)