Presentation of the Excellence Cluster Physics at JMU Würzburg
This article was originally published in German. The English version is an automatic translation and may contain errors. The German original is authoritative.
A half-dead cat in the physics research laboratory. Schrödinger, who is present and simultaneously absent. What this is all about will become clear in the course of the article. What is certain is that physics at Julius-Universität-Würzburg plays a superordinate role. As the only subject at JMU Würzburg, they have an excellence cluster. It is called Complexity and Topology in Quantum Matter. They share this title with TU Dresden. More than 270 researchers from 34 countries and from four continents investigate topological quantum materials, which reveal surprising phenomena under extreme conditions such as ultra-low temperatures, high pressure or strong magnetic fields. The excellence cluster is funded as part of the excellence strategy of the federal government and the states – as the only cross-state cluster in Germany.
Prof. Dr. Ralph Claessen is Speaker of the Cluster and is committed every day at the highest academic level and with great passion to quantum physics research. He is currently occupied with planning a large-scale conference on the subject of the latest quantum phenomena arising from topological physics and its interplay with many-body interactions in various areas of quantum matter. This will take place from 25 to 29 July 2022 as an in-person event at the Congress Centre Würzburg. Internationally renowned researchers are invited, including Bent Weber from Singapore and Subir Sachdev from Harvard University.
Another highlight and moreover a great success of the Excellence Cluster is the games app "Katze Q – ein Quanten-Adventure". This is a joint project with the Dresden Cluster and game designer Philipp Stollenmayer. The app has won numerous awards. It is almost difficult to adequately emphasise all the awards and their importance, there are so many. At the Valencia Indie Summit, the app was awarded "Best Mobile Indie Game". Furthermore, the mobile game has been nominated for the GOLDENER SPATZ in the "Digital" competition as well as for the German Computer Game Award (DCP) as "Best Family Game". The German Computer Game Award (DCP) is the most important award for the German games industry. The GOLDENER SPATZ is the largest festival for German-language children's media. The mobile game, which gets children and young people excited about physics through play, has been available in app and play stores since mid-October 2021. To date, the app has been downloaded approximately 100,000 times worldwide.
Cluster Speaker Prof. Dr. Ralph Claessen, Professor of Experimental Physics at Julius Maximilians University (JMU) Würzburg, says enthusiastically: "I can hardly believe that our games app 'Katze Q' is winning awards internationally and is now even nominated for the German Computer Game Award! My working day usually consists of physical formulae and laboratory experiments. The fact that we have managed to convey this complex quantum physics through a mobile game makes me proud. And that this crazy idea works very well, we see especially when children, parents and teachers write to us. The app 'Katze Q' gives children and adults the chance to explore the strange quantum world together."
The model for Katze Q is a popular thought experiment in quantum mechanics by Nobel Prize winner Erwin Schrödinger (1887 – 1961), which became known as Schrödinger's Cat. With the animal in the box, which is alive and dead at the same time, he created in 1935 a vivid example of a fundamental principle of quantum mechanics: objects can exist in different states at the same time that actually mutually exclude each other – called "superposition".
Just today Prof. Dr. Claessen met with a postdoc to answer in a short video on the specially set up YouTube channel QUANTube the questions posed by users in the cat app. This is done on a scientific basis, but at the same time in an easily understandable way and with attention to detail, so that young and old get a taste for physics.
The Speaker of the Excellence Cluster has furthermore announced that Adriana Pálffy-Buß is taking on the new W2 professorship for Theoretical Quantum Information and Quantum Optics of the Excellence Cluster ct.qmat. She is an expert in the young research field of X-ray quantum optics. Her research area (X-ray quantum optics) uses extremely short-wavelength X-ray radiation instead of visible light to investigate the tiniest particles. This could become relevant for non-destructive imaging procedures and makes a decisive contribution to fundamental quantum physics research.
"I am delighted that we can expand the research area of quantum optics in Würzburg together with Adriana Pálffy-Buß into the field of X-ray physics. With her, we have gained a renowned expert in light-matter interaction who continues our Würzburg X-ray tradition – and in a completely new quantum direction. Here, the quantum properties of the X-ray photons themselves are in the foreground and we hope for innovative and original perspectives and research approaches," emphasises Prof. Dr. Ralph Claessen.
At the centre of X-ray quantum optics are the effects that arise in the atomic nucleus through interaction with X-rays. The interaction of X-ray quanta with atomic nuclei could open up novel possibilities for materials research: "Perhaps X-ray photons could be used as information carriers in the future or new applications such as X-ray lasers could emerge," says Claessen.
Würzburg is the pinnacle of her outstanding career. "Würzburg is not only the home of X-ray radiation, but through the Excellence Cluster also an incredibly exciting research environment for quantum physics. I am very much looking forward to benefiting from it," says Adriana Pálffy-Buß, who most recently worked at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg as part of a Heisenberg Fellowship from the German Research Foundation.
Another great success that must be mentioned here: Dr. Tobias Meng, researcher at the Excellence Cluster ct.qmat of the Universities of Dresden and Würzburg, is being awarded by the German
Research Foundation (DFG) and the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) with the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize 2022. The prize is considered the most important award for young scientists in Germany and is endowed with €20,000.
The young father designs revolutionary quantum materials that in the future could, for example, conduct electricity
without loss or store gigantic amounts of information
– the building blocks for the high-tech of the 21st century.
For his extraordinary scientific achievement, Tobias
Meng is awarded the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize by the DFG and BMBF 2022
in recognition. The citation states that he has produced groundbreaking
work in topological physics and on the behaviour of topological
quantum materials. Meng works on superconductivity,
strongly correlated systems, transport phenomena and
quantum computing and uses an extraordinarily broad
methodological spectrum for this.
The prize ceremony takes place as a public event on 3 May
2022 in Berlin and will be broadcast via livestream.
The entire Sprachrohr team and I congratulate Prof. Dr. Meng and look forward to many more prizes, awards and research successes for the Excellence Cluster.