Simon Pigeon joins us

New arrival at QTeQ!! Dr. Simon Pigeon has just joined the group coming from the University of Lund, where he worked on classical networks. Simon, an expert in solid-state quantum optics, joins QTeQ to work with Alessandro, Gabriele, Lorenzo and Mauro on thermodynamics of quantum systems, under the funding provided by the John Templeton Foundation.

We’re very happy to have Simon and his family in Belfast!!


Jie passes his viva!

Our own Jie has just passed his viva!!

Congratulations to Dr. Jie, who successfully defended his thesis [Prof. Sougato Bose (UCL) and Prof. Jorge Kohanoff (QUB) as examiners]. According to Prof. Bose, Jie did a wonderful job. The whole QTeQ is proud of Jie and congratulates him on his success. He is the third student to graduate since the new management of QTeQ, after Steve Campbell and Gerard McKeown.

Three years flew, really. Jie has been a fantastic student and a friend. He will now enjoy some relaxing time in his China (doing a bit of Physics in Prof. C. P. Sun’s group) and will then seek greener scientific pastures.

Everybody, and Mauro in particular, will miss Jie and his witty sense of humour. The group wishes him a prompt coming back for a pint and more collaborations.


QTeQ paper in Nature Communications!

Great news for the group and Carlo in particular! His paper written in collaboration with the experimental quantum optics team at POSTECH (South Korea) and M.S. Kim (Imperial College, UK) has been published online today in Nature Communications.

The paper reports on the experimental simulation, on a table-top linear optics setup, of a bidimensional quantum random walk that integrates the counterintuitive features of a “delayed-choice” experiment with the peculiar statistical properties of quantum walks. Have a look at the details of the experiment from

Y.-C. Jeong, et al. “Experimental realization of a delayed-choice quantum walk”, Nature Commun. 4 (2013)

Many congratulations to Carlo for this achievement! Ad maiora!!


QTeQ’s work on PRA’s Kaleidoscope

An image from a recent paper by Mauro and collaborators [G. Vacanti et al, Nonclassicality of optomechanical devices in experimentally realistic operating regimes, Phys. Rev. A 88, 013851 (2013)] has been selected for the July 2013 issue of PRA’s Kaleidoscope!

Kaleidoscope showcases a selection of images from published articles in APS’s journals on the grounds of aestethics, among the most attractive and interesting graphics. Check up the APS’s editorial for further info.

The paper, published in collaboration with researchers at University of Oxford, Imperial College London, Universita’ di Palermo, and National University of Singapore, reports on the test of Bell’s inequalities using macroscopic quantum states of mechanical oscillators. Clearly, besides the science, the work is endowed with artistic merits, of which we are proud!

Overall, this is the third time work by QTeQ’s members is selected for the Kaleidoscope’s showcase.


Alessandro Ferraro joins us

Dr. Alessandro Ferraro has finally joined QTeQ as a new Lecturer in Quantum Information. Alessandro will start headlong by supervising one postgraduate research student (Mr. Darren Moore), who will start in October 2013.

QTeQ full-heartedly welcomes Alessandro and wishes him all the very best for his new Irish adventure!


PRA paper for Tony and a few friends!

Tony, who is spending the second batch of his fellowship here in Belfast, just published a paper in Phys. Rev. A with colleagues at University of Calabria, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte/Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, and Universitaet des Saarlandes/University College Cork. The work discusses the possibility of routing of quantum information using quantum spin chains and examines the fidelity of the process against the parameters of the models being considered.

All the details of the work can be found in

S. Paganelli, et al., Routing quantum information in spin chains, Phys. Rev. A 87, 062309 (2013)

Congrats, Tony!!


All-QTeQ paper in PRL highlighted by the Editors!!

Great news for the QTeQ group!! The work by Laura, Gabriele and Mauro on the interferometric reconstruction of the statistical properties of the work done on a quantum system subjected to a process has been published in Phys. Rev. Lett. and is among the “Editors’ suggestions” of this week.

The paper reports on a new way to infer the characteristic function of work distribution which holds the promise to be soon implemented experimentally. Check out the details of the proposed scheme in

L. Mazzola, G. De Chiara, and M. Paternostro, Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 230602 (2013)

Remarkably, this is the first all-QTeQ letter since 2011, and is thus special for the group!

A closely related paper (among the Editors’ highlights as well) has been published simultaneously by our colleagues (and friends) working at the Oxford and Pisa groups

R. Dorner et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 230601 (2013)

Quantum themodynamics is getting hot indeed…


Jader Pereira dos Santos joins QTeQ

Jader Pereira dos Santos, a PhD student from Universidade Federal do ABC (UFABC), joins QTeQ for 1 year to work under the support of the CNPq-funded “Science without Borders” project awarded to the group and Prof. Fernando Semiao (UFABC) . Bem vindo Jader!


Giacomo’s first paper published in PRA!

Giacomo Torlai, final-year student at LMU (Munich), former summer student at QTeQ and frequent visitor, has published his first paper! The work, which is a collaboration with Gerard, Gabriele and Mauro, together with colleagues in Olomouc and Seoul, analyses the violation of Bell’s inequalities by entangled coherent states subjected to local rotations and heralded amplification. Details can be found at

G. Torlai, et al., Phys. Rev. A 87, 052112 (2013)


Jie’s paper chosen by IoP select

Jie’s newly published NJP paper

J. Li, S. Groeblacher, and M. Paternostro, “Enhancing non-classicality in mechanical systems“, New J. Phys. 15, 033023 (2013),

written in collaboration with Caltech, has been chosen by the IoP Editors to be part of the 2013 “IoP select” list! This collates articles from the last 12 months that have been chosen by the IoP Editors for their novelty, significance and potential impact on future research. Well done, Jie!!!