News

New article about transmission spectra of the driven, dissipative Rabi model in the USC regime

We present theoretical transmission spectra of a strongly driven, damped, flux qubit coupled to a dissipative resonator in the ultrastrong coupling regime. Such a qubit-oscillator system, described within a dissipative Rabi model, constitutes the building block of superconducting circuit QED platforms. The addition of a strong drive allows one to characterize the system properties and study novel phenomena, leading to a better understanding and control of the qubit-oscillator system. In this work, the calculated transmission of a weak probe field quantifies the response of the qubit, in frequency domain, under the influence of the quantized resonator and of the strong microwave drive.

New Post-Doc arrived

This month, Elia Bertoldo started working in our group as post-doc. He completed his bachelor and master in Italy, then he did his PhD at Ludwig Maximilian University (Munich). Welcome aboard, Elia!

XXXII Certamen Jóvenes Investigadores award

High-school student Carla Caro Villanova recently got awarded the first prize of the competition XXXII Certamen Jóvenes Investigadores that is called out annualy by the Spanish Youth Institute (INJUVE). The prize rewards excellence in the scientific projects of Spanish high-school students nationwide. Carla indepdentently conducted her research project co-supervised by David López-Núñez from our group and presented her work with the tile ‘To what extent do quantum annealing computers outperform classical computers?

Latest batch of PhD students arrived

This week the latest batch of newcomers arrived and started working in our group. Hence, we welcome aboard Alba Torras and Luca Cozzolino . Both just recently finished their Master’s and will continue to work on a PhD. Alba studied at UAB and UPC while Luca completed his studies at Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II.

New PhD student Boris

We welcome the new PhD student and “la Caixa” fellow Boris Nedyalkov to our team. Boris holds a BSc in Physics from Sofia University and recently finished his graduate studies in Electrical Engineering at Tokyo University.

Prestigious Ramón y Cajal fellowship awarded

We congratulate our group leader, Dr. Pol Forn-Díaz , on receving the prestigious Ramón y Cajal fellowship by the Spanish Ministries of Universities, and Science and Innovation. The award is given to young researchers to aid them consolidate their early-stage careers at a public Spanish research institution. With this award, Dr. Forn-Díaz will continue to establish the QCT group at IFAE and extend its network of collaborators. The fellowship will start in 2021 and will last 5 years, including a research budget.

Celebration of Quantic's birthday

Despite the current situation due to COVID-19, which unfortunately did not allow for everyone’s attendance, we recently celebrated the 3rd year of existence of our interinstitutional Quantic group. Found in 2017 on June 1st as a collaboration between Universitat de Barcelona (UB) and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), the Quantic group has expanded and now includes also the Institut de Fisica d’Altes Energies (IFAE), where we are currently setting up our quantum computing laboratory.

Begin of Summer Internships

We welcome aboard our this year’s summer interns , Queralt and Raquel, who already started working on their research projects. Queralt Portell is a 3rd year undergraduate student in Physics and Math from UAB and is working on FPGA programming to acquire qubit states faster. Raquel Garcia is in her 4th year of undergraduate studies in Physics and Math likewise at UAB. Her project is on programming scripts to calibrate qubits.

New Project Management Assistance

We are pleased to welcome Sara Martínez de Salinas Uzquiza to our growing family. Sara joins IFAE’s Project Management Unit to support our group in the coordination of several European research projects . She holds a PhD in Chemistry from the Universidad de Oviedo and worked previously as PostDoc at the Institut Català d’Investigació Química (ICIQ) in Tarragona.

Start of the European QuantERA project SiUCs

This month marks the official start the European project SiUCs (Superinductor-based Quantum Technologies with Ultrastrong Couplings), which was succesfully granted in the 2019 QuantERA call. The kick-off meeting is supposed to take place on May 4th, 2020. The SiUCs project consortium follows a radically new approach to quantum computing: we will harness the potentiality of very large light-matter coupling - often referred to as ultra-strong coupling (USC) - instead of fighting it.