A year passed-by full of exciting physics and new discoveries. One of the major announcements in 2013 was the discovery of the Higgs boson at CERN 1. ATLAS and CMS experiments confirmed that a new particle has been found which is compatible with the Higgs boson. In the same year, the Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to François Englert and Peter W. Higgs “for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles…” 2. Although the prize went to two theory pioneers it is clear that this success was a result of major efforts of thousands of people, including experimentalists, engineers as well as people working in administration, logistic and funding. A truly Big Science enterprise. Annalen der Physik congratulates all people involved for this feast of human curiosity, endurance and the untiring will to understand nature. In addition to this, understanding fundamental physical laws can also be brought forward on a low energy scale which marked a major theme in Annalen der Physik last year, see our (double) special issue on “Precision Experiments and Fundamental Physics at Low Energies” edited by Klaus Blaum, Holger Müller, and Nathal Severijns3, 4. Other topics were of interest, too. Recently, and most likely inspired by the seminal work from Nobel laureates Serge Haroche 5 and David Wineland 6, our guest editors and advisory board members Rainer Blatt, Immanuel Bloch, Ignacio Cirac, and Peter Zoller organized the special issue “Quantum Simulation” which also presents the Nobel lectures of the afore mentioned prize winners 7. In this context I would like to point to the work of S. Schmidt and J. Koch “Circuit QED lattices – Towards quantum simulation with superconducting circuits” earlier last year 8 and to M. Schlosshauer, J. Kofler and A. Zeilinger's discussion on “The interpretation of quantum mechanics: from disagreement to consensus?” 9. Yet, there were more aspects in physics that seemed worth to be brought forward. Peter Hommelhoff, Matthias Kling, and Mark Stockman organized a special issue with invited contributions in the field of “Ultrafast Phenomena on the Nanoscale” 10, including intensely discussed problems in the field like high-harmonic generation 11-14. What else is out there? For 2014, Annalen der Physik has announced to publish focus issues on three major topics to catch up with recent research efforts in some of the most challenging and promising branches in our field. One of the most puzzling and controversially discussed questions concerns the destiny of our universe. Richard Battye, Ariel Goobar, and Jochen Weller organize the special issue “The Accelerating Universe” (submission deadline March 17, 2014). Invitations to participate are still open and can be viewed at www.ann-phys.org. This special issue complements the issue on “Dark Matter” by Matthias Bartelmann and Volker Springel 15 from 2012 with highlight articles from Lars Bergstrom 16, Carlos S. Frenk and Simon D.M. White 17 and many more. Another topic will be covered by Jack Harris, Peter Rabl and Albert Schliesser, focusing on “Quantum and Hybrid Mechanical Systems – From Fundamentals to Applications” (submission deadline May 2, 2014). This issue, too, adds nicely to our previous efforts to publish more articles in this field, see for example Pierre Meystre's overview article “A short walk through quantum optomechanics” 18. Further submissions are welcome! Finally, Francisco Guinea, Misha I. Katsnelson, and Tim Wehling will organize the issue “Two-dimensional Materials: Electronic Structure and Many-Body Effects” (submission deadline May 1, 2014). As the guest editors said these new materials “hold the promise for novel devices with designed electronic properties” thus being today's subject of basic research and tomorrow's everyday technology. For further details, please visit our homepage. In this current issue we present some interesting overview works in the fields of quantum optics (G. Feve et al. page 1) and two-dimensional spectroscopy (G. Scholes et al. page 31), as well as novel research work by P. Kinsler and M. McCall on spacetime transformation theory (page 51) and J. E. Hirsch's work on superconductivity and diamagnetism (page 63). R. L. Hall et al. report on Nodal theorems for the Dirac equation (page 79), C. Henkel and V. E. Mkrtchian describe the Casimir effect (page 87), A. Kolovsky discusses bosonic and fermionic carriers in one- and two-dimensional lattices (page 102), and Y. Fu et al. report on light absorbing by meta-nanorings (page 112). Enjoy reading Annalen der Physik!
A year passed-by full of exciting physics and new discoveries. One of the major announcements in 2013 was the discovery of the Higgs boson at CERN 1. ATLAS and CMS experiments confirmed that a new particle has been found which is compatible with the Higgs boson. In the same year, the Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to François Englert and Peter W. Higgs “for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles…” 2. Although the prize went to two theory pioneers it is clear that this success was a result of major efforts of thousands of people, including experimentalists, engineers as well as people working in administration, logistic and funding. A truly Big Science enterprise. Annalen der Physik congratulates all people involved for this feast of human curiosity, endurance and the untiring will to understand nature. In addition to this, understanding fundamental physical laws can also be brought forward on a low energy scale which marked a major theme in Annalen der Physik last year, see our (double) special issue on “Precision Experiments and Fundamental Physics at Low Energies” edited by Klaus Blaum, Holger Müller, and Nathal Severijns3, 4. Other topics were of interest, too. Recently, and most likely inspired by the seminal work from Nobel laureates Serge Haroche 5 and David Wineland 6, our guest editors and advisory board members Rainer Blatt, Immanuel Bloch, Ignacio Cirac, and Peter Zoller organized the special issue “Quantum Simulation” which also presents the Nobel lectures of the afore mentioned prize winners 7. In this context I would like to point to the work of S. Schmidt and J. Koch “Circuit QED lattices – Towards quantum simulation with superconducting circuits” earlier last year 8 and to M. Schlosshauer, J. Kofler and A. Zeilinger's discussion on “The interpretation of quantum mechanics: from disagreement to consensus?” 9. Yet, there were more aspects in physics that seemed worth to be brought forward. Peter Hommelhoff, Matthias Kling, and Mark Stockman organized a special issue with invited contributions in the field of “Ultrafast Phenomena on the Nanoscale” 10, including intensely discussed problems in the field like high-harmonic generation 11-14. What else is out there? For 2014, Annalen der Physik has announced to publish focus issues on three major topics to catch up with recent research efforts in some of the most challenging and promising branches in our field. One of the most puzzling and controversially discussed questions concerns the destiny of our universe. Richard Battye, Ariel Goobar, and Jochen Weller organize the special issue “The Accelerating Universe” (submission deadline March 17, 2014). Invitations to participate are still open and can be viewed at www.ann-phys.org. This special issue complements the issue on “Dark Matter” by Matthias Bartelmann and Volker Springel 15 from 2012 with highlight articles from Lars Bergstrom 16, Carlos S. Frenk and Simon D.M. White 17 and many more. Another topic will be covered by Jack Harris, Peter Rabl and Albert Schliesser, focusing on “Quantum and Hybrid Mechanical Systems – From Fundamentals to Applications” (submission deadline May 2, 2014). This issue, too, adds nicely to our previous efforts to publish more articles in this field, see for example Pierre Meystre's overview article “A short walk through quantum optomechanics” 18. Further submissions are welcome! Finally, Francisco Guinea, Misha I. Katsnelson, and Tim Wehling will organize the issue “Two-dimensional Materials: Electronic Structure and Many-Body Effects” (submission deadline May 1, 2014). As the guest editors said these new materials “hold the promise for novel devices with designed electronic properties” thus being today's subject of basic research and tomorrow's everyday technology. For further details, please visit our homepage. In this current issue we present some interesting overview works in the fields of quantum optics (G. Feve et al. page 1) and two-dimensional spectroscopy (G. Scholes et al. page 31), as well as novel research work by P. Kinsler and M. McCall on spacetime transformation theory (page 51) and J. E. Hirsch's work on superconductivity and diamagnetism (page 63). R. L. Hall et al. report on Nodal theorems for the Dirac equation (page 79), C. Henkel and V. E. Mkrtchian describe the Casimir effect (page 87), A. Kolovsky discusses bosonic and fermionic carriers in one- and two-dimensional lattices (page 102), and Y. Fu et al. report on light absorbing by meta-nanorings (page 112). Enjoy reading Annalen der Physik!
Quantum many-body systems, as they appear in different branches of physics and chemistry, are very hard to simulate. The number of parameters defining their quantum states grows exponentially with the number of constituents. This prevents us from exploring and investigating relevant problems involving relatively small numbers of subsystems even with the help of the most powerful supercomputers. Richard Feynman already noticed this difficulty back in 1981 when he wrote his visionary paper “Simulating Physics with Computers” [Int. J. Theor. Phys. 21:6/7, 467 (1982)]. There, he proposed to use quantum systems (as opposed to classical computers) to perform the simulation and in this way to circumvent the need to store and compute a colossal number of parameters, necessary to describe the pertaining superpositions. What was a visionary idea at that time has become a very active field of research in the last few years. The extraordinary progress of both theoretical and experimental research in quantum physics allows us now to tame, control, and manipulate various quantum systems with unprecedented precision. Laser, magnetic, electronic and other technologies enable us to arrange quantum subsystems in different geometries, modify their interactions, and detect them. This allows us to engineer Hamiltonians and emulate systems displaying some of the most intriguing quantum phenomena. This tremendous progress is, to a large extent, due to the pioneering work of many researchers during the last twenty to thirty years. Here, the investigations of basic phenomena with one or few atoms or photons were of particular impact. The degree of control achieved in the experiments has enabled the observation of mind-boggling quantum effects, related to the superposition principle or to entangled states, and their disappearance due to decoherence. In fact, the 2012 Nobel Prize has been awarded to two scientists, S. Haroche and D. Wineland, for such ground-breaking experiments. Such experiments, often in combination with laser cooling of atoms or ions and Bose-Einstein condensation, have formed one of the pillars on which the field of quantum simulations is being established. Quantum simulations with cold atoms, either in magnetic traps or in optical lattices, with trapped ions, with photons, with superconducting devices, with quantum dots, etc., have been theoretically proposed and experimentally considered by many researchers. Most of the proposals so far deal with problems in condensed matter physics that are either difficult to tackle with modern supercomputers or are difficult to observe in solid state systems. This has established a very close link between different disciplines, like atomic, molecular, and optical (AMO) physics, and condensed matter physics. Although some of the experiments are still in their infancy, and a lot of research is still needed, the extraordinary progress made in all these research areas during the last few years makes us feel confident that in the not too distant future quantum simulators will provide a key tool to investigate many-body quantum systems. Furthermore, we also expect that quantum simulators will help quantum physicists to establish new and fruitful links to other scientific communities, like high-energy physics or quantum chemistry. The present special issue contains various review papers as well as research papers on quantum simulations. It starts out with two papers written by last year's Nobel Prize winners describing their foundational work (Wineland, p. 739 and Haroche, p. 763). The issue continues with three thorough, invited review papers covering different topics on quantum simulations. The first one reviews recent theoretical proposals to use cold atoms in optical lattices to simulate lattice gauge theories of the sort that appear in high-energy physics (U.-J. Wiese, p. 783). The second covers both theoretical proposals and experimental demonstrations of cold-atom systems to simulate the physics of matter in the presence of gauge fields, displaying so-called topological phenomena, which so far have only been observed in solid-state systems (I. Spielman, p. 794). The third one contains an extensive overview and new proposals to perform a broad range of quantum simulations using quantum dot systems (P. Barthelmy et al., p. 813). The issue also includes six original papers with a variety of theoretical proposals as well as the introduction of novel theoretical techniques related to the field of quantum simulation. The field of quantum simulations is just starting, but we are confident that it will soon generate an even larger plethora of new ideas and discoveries, trigger interdisciplinary research, and lead us to the adventure of describing and understanding the quantum world. We hope that this special issue will help future researchers in such an exciting adventure. Rainer Blatt received his PhD degree in physics from the University of Mainz in 1981. As a postdoctoral fellow he worked on atomic beam cooling in Boulder, CO and later as a research assistant in Hamburg with single trapped ions. In 1995 he accepted a chair in experimental physics at the University of Innsbruck working on quantum information processing with trapped ions. Since 2003 he is also scientific director at the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Immanuel Bloch received his PhD degree in physics from the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich in 2000. As a junior group leader, he continued in Munich starting his work on ultracold quantum gases in optical lattices. In 2008 he was appointed scientific director of the newly founded division on Quantum Many-Body Systems at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics. Since 2009 he also holds a chair in quantum optics at the Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich. Ignacio Cirac received his PhD degree in physics from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid in 1991. He was professor at the Universities of Castilla-La Mancha and Innsbruck from 1991–1996 and 1996–2001, respectively. In 2001 he joined the Max-Planck Institute of Quantum Optics, where he leads the Theory Division. His current research interests include quantum information theory and quantum optics. Peter Zoller obtained his doctorate from the University of Innsbruck in 1977. He was Max Kade Fellow at the University of Southern California from 1978/79, and was JILA visiting Fellow 1981/82 and 1988. In 1990 he became JILA Fellow and professor of physics at the University of Colorado. At the end of 1994, he accepted a chair at the University of Innsbruck, where he has worked ever since. Since 2003, he has also held the position of Scientific Director at the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.
The turn of the XXth century witnessed a revolution in physics comparable to Isaac Newton’s discovery of the universal laws of mechanics and of gravitation three centuries earlier. The world required to be described in novel terms, as the immutable, deterministic view of our familiar universe had given way to a new world picture, one which featured chance, flux, and an incessant upsurge of waves of matter. Such a worldview was so radically new and counterintuitive that it gave rise to strong debates, to the effect that Albert Einstein himself tried to oppose it on the grounds that “God does not play dice”. In spite of the intense debates that accompanied its emergence, quantum mechanics quickly proved an incredibly efficacious new tool to understand and to predict a wide array of new phenomena. It was so successful that in no time it broke free from the environment of research labs to become part of daily life, making it possible, for example, to understand why some materials were conductors, while others were insulators. Along with it, came, too, the discovery of transistors, on which much of modern electronics rests. It also led to understand how novel materials known as superconductors allow the transport of electricity with no loss, thus paving the way for new developments in the fields of medical imagery or energy distribution. Other aspects of the quantum theory led to the development of atomic clocks of astounding accuracy, which would be wrong by no more than fifteen seconds, had they been set at the beginning of the universe. A hundred years later, at the turn of the XXIst century, Quantum mechanics has lost none of its astounding power. Contemporary research has undertaken the task of exploring its less immediately perceptible aspects. Groundbreaking developments have ensued, such as the teleportation of grains of light or the possibility, once predicted by the great physicist Richard Feynman, to build, one day, novel computers which, unlike the ones we are familiar with today, will be able to process innumerable numbers of operations in parallel. The Wright Colloquium will be for us the occasion to explore, in the company of five internationallyknown specialists in the field, some of the fascinating aspects of quantum mechanics. We will appraise how efficiently quantum physics can describe our world, and confront its limitation when it is faced with the infinitely small (in relation to recent experiments carried out at the CERN) as with the incommensurably large scale of sidereal spaces. We will appreciate the extent to which quantum physics already has impacted our everyday lives, and evoke the way in which novel fields such as quantum computers and quantum information will entail profound changes in the future. The quantum adventure has only just begun! Monday 15 November 2010 - 18h30 Jochen Mannhart Center for Electronic Correlations and Magnetism, University of Augsburg, Germany Quantum Physics on the Scale of Daily Life Tuesday 16 November 2010 - 18h30 Wolfgang Ketterle Nobel Laureate 2001 (Physics), Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, U.S.A. When freezing cold is not cold enough New forms of matter close to absolute zero temperature Wednesday 17 November 2010 - 18h30 David Gross Nobel Laureate 2004 (Physics), Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of California, Santa-Barbara, U.S.A. Quantum Mechanics of the Very, Very Small and the Very, Very Large Thursday 18 November 2010 - 18h30 Alain Aspect CNRS senior scientist and Professor Institut d'Optique and Ecole Polytechnique Palaiseau, France. From Einstein’s intuition to quantum bits: a new quantum age? Vendredi 19 novembre 2010 - 18h30 Rainer Blatt Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information, Austrian Academy of Sciences and University of Innsbruck, Austria The Quantum Way of Doing Computations
Among all the inventions that quantum physics has produced, the laser holds a particularly important place, both for the rich story of successive discoveries that led to its birth, and for the role it has played in fundamental and applied research. I recall here the lineage of theoretical discoveries and experiments that have marked this history, restricting myself to the contribution of lasers to blue sky science and leaving apart its well-known role in various domains of technology. This story started from advances in the old quantum theory, from Einstein’s theoretical description of stimulated emission to O. Stern’s experimental discovery of the spatial quantization of the electron spin. Nuclear magnetic resonance, atomic clocks, optical pumping, and masers followed and the pace of discoveries accelerated with the appearance of the laser in 1960. This extraordinary light source has since enabled breakthroughs in fundamental physics and opened up fields of research that could not even have been imagined at the time of its birth. I was fortunate to begin my career in physics at this crossroad of atomic physics and optics. I give in this article my personal view of the great adventures in fundamental research in which I participated as an actor or spectator, from the cooling and trapping of atoms by light, to the physics of quantum gases of bosons and fermions, the manipulation of individual quantum particles and quantum simulations. Many other areas of fundamental physics, which I will only mention briefly, owe their development to lasers and further advances are still to be expected in the years to come.
Trial of quantum abnormality and its potential genuine applications have been perceived with the 2022 Nobel Prize in physical science.\n\nAt a few level we are dependent upon quantum decides that even Albert Einstein battled to find a sense of peace with. Generally, these guidelines work out in the background in semiconductors that make up micro processors, lasers and, surprisingly, in the science of particles and atoms in materials surrounding us. Applications that originate from the current year's Nobel Prize exploit quantum highlights at bigger scopes. They incorporate totally secure correspondences and quantum PCs that may ultimately tackle issues that no possible ordinary PC could finish in the lifetime of the universe.\n\nThe current year's award is divided between three physicists. Alain Perspective and John Clauser affirmed that the guidelines of quantum mechanics, as peculiar and hard to accept as they are, truly rule the world, while Anton Zeilinger enjoys taken benefit of bizarre quantum conduct to foster simple applications that no customary innovation can coordinate. Every laureate will bring back home 33% of the award cash, which aggregates 10 million Swedish kronor, worth generally $915,000 as of October 4.\n\n"Today, we honor three physicists whose spearheading tests showed us that the peculiar universe of trap … isn't simply the miniature universe of iotas, and surely not the virtual universe of sci-fi or magic, yet it's this present reality that we as a whole live in," said Thors Hans Hansson, an individual from the Nobel Board for Physical science, at a question and answer session reporting the honor on October 4 at the Imperial Swedish Foundation of Sciences (SN: 11/5/10).\n\n"It was absolutely extremely energizing to find out about the three laureates," says physicist Jerry Chow of IBM Quantum in Yorktown Levels, N.Y. "Viewpoint, Zeilinger and Clauser — they're all extremely, notable in our quantum local area, and their work is something that is truly been a major piece of many individuals' exploration endeavors over numerous years."\n\nPerspective, of the Université Paris-Saclay and École Polytechnique in France, and Clauser, who presently runs an organization in California, showed that there are no confidential back channels of correspondence that make sense of how two particles can exist as a solitary element, despite the fact that they are far separated (SN: 12/29/14).\n\nThe analyses of Zeilinger, of the College of Vienna, that depend on that quantum conduct incorporate exhibitions of interchanges, totally secure encryption and parts urgent for quantum PCs. He spearheaded another, broadly misconstrued, application — quantum instant transportation. Not at all like the instant transportation of individuals and items in sci-fi, the impact includes the ideal transmission of data about a quantum object starting with one spot then onto the next.\n\n"I was constantly keen on quantum mechanics from the absolute first minutes when I read about it," Zeilinger said through telephone at the news meeting reporting the honor. "I was really struck by a portion of the hypothetical expectations, since they didn't fit the typical instincts which one could have."\n\nThe revelation of quantum conduct that controls the world at little scopes, similar to the movement of an electron around an iota, upset physical science toward the start of the twentieth 100 years. Many driving researchers, most broadly including Einstein, recognized that quantum speculations worked, yet contended that they couldn't be the genuine depiction of the world since they required, best case scenario, ascertaining the probabilities that something would occur (SN: 1/12/22). To Einstein, this really intended that there was some secret data that investigations were too rough to even consider revealing.\n\nOthers trusted that quantum conduct, derogatively called oddness, however hard to comprehend, had no mysterious approaches to sending data. It was generally a question of assessment and discussion until physicist John Ringer proposed a test during the 1960s to demonstrate that there were no secret channels of correspondence among quantum objects (SN: 12/29/14). At the time obviously an examination to play out the test was conceivable.\n\nClauser was quick to foster a down to earth trial to affirm Ringer's test, despite the fact that there remained provisos his investigation couldn't really take a look at that left space for uncertainty. (His advantage in science grew early. In 1959 and 1960, Clauser contended in the Public Science Fair, presently known as the Global Science and Designing Fair (SN: 5/23/59). The fair is controlled by the General public for Science, which distributes Science News.)\n\nhttps://zenodo.org/record/7421594\n\nhttps://zenodo.org/record/7421608\n\nhttps://zenodo.org/record/7421634\n\nhttps://zenodo.org/record/7421642\n\nhttps://zenodo.org/record/7421652\n\nhttps://zenodo.org/record/7421671\n\nhttps://zenodo.org/record/7421680\n\nhttps://zenodo.org/record/7422291\n\nhttps://zenodo.org/record/7422303\n\nhttps://zenodo.org/record/7422363\n\nhttps://zenodo.org/record/7422370\n\nhttps://zenodo.org/record/7422712\n\nhttps://zenodo.org/record/7422718\n\nhttps://zenodo.org/record/7422735\n\nViewpoint took the thought further to dispose of any opportunity that quantum mechanics had some secret underpinnings of traditional material science (SN: 1/11/86). The investigations of Clauser and Viewpoint included making sets of photons that were ensnared, implying that they were basically a solitary item. As the photons moved every which way, they stayed ensnared. That is, they keep on existing as a solitary, expanded object. Estimating the attributes of one immediately uncovers qualities of the other, regardless of how far separated they might be.\n\nEntrapment is a fragile situation and is hard to keep up with, however the consequences of the trials of Clauser and Viewpoint show that quantum impacts can't be made sense of with any secret factors that would be indications of non-quantum underpinnings.\n\nTo Chow, the meaning of this examination is twofold. "There's actually a component of appearing, from a philosophical point, that quantum mechanics is genuine," he says. "However at that point, from the more down to earth outlook … this equivalent lovely hypothesis of quantum mechanics gives an alternate arrangement of rules by which data is handled." That, thusly, opens up new roads for cutting edge innovations like quantum PCs and correspondences (SN: 12/3/20).\n\nZeilinger's tests exploit entrapment to accomplish accomplishments that wouldn't be imaginable without the impacts that Clauser and Perspective affirmed. He has expanded the investigations from the lab to intercontinental distances, opening up the likelihood that entrapment can be put to commonsense use (SN: 5/31/12). Since collaborating with one of a couple of ensnared particles influences different, they can become key parts in secure correspondences and encryption. An untouchable attempting to tune in on a quantum dispatch would be uncovered on the grounds that they would break the entrapment as they sneaked around.
The intensive path of development of science has led not only to the compilation of a large amount of poorly systematized knowledge about nature but also to the fact that under this "cultural layer" many magnificent ideas of the luminaries of the last century were found. This primarily concerns quantum theory, which has departed from the principles of quantization of Planck–Einstein and degenerated into a formal science, which not only does not need to be understood but also is forbidden to be understood. However, starting from the Planck–Einstein spatial resonances called quanta, we get a transparent physical picture and can correct a number of theories. The foundation of this book was laid by the popular science article "Uncombed Physics and the Particle of God" (https://rusnor.org/pubs/articles/8058.htm). This is what the Higgs boson was pompously called when Higgs was awarded the Nobel Prize. This work was continued by the author in subsequent books in which the author deliberately (for self-control) tried to include only the material that had passed the examination in scientific journals. This book includes both the author's early scientific works, which identified problems in elementary basic models, and the author's latest, which gave ways to solve fundamental problems.