Dr Tony Apollaro, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Physics, has joined the ASPECTS (Quantum Thermodynamics of Precision in Electronic Devices) consortium in November 2023.
ASPECTS is a €2.7M three-years project (2022-2025) investigating the energetic resources needed for precision measurement in the quantum regime. The consortium consists of leading experimental and theoretical physicists of Trinity College Dublin (Ireland), Universidad de Murcia (Spain), Technical University of Vienna (Austria), Chalmers University of Technology (Sweden) and University of Oxford (UK). The University of Malta has joined the consortium in November 2023 through the Hop-on Facility call of Horizon Europe and has been awarded €450k.
Ground-breaking advances in the control of Individual Quantum Systems have recently triggered the so-called 2nd quantum revolution based on exploiting quantum resources for high-impact technological applications, from Cryptography to Computation and Sensing.
ASPECTS aims at exploiting quantum resources to pursue an advantage in precision measurement. Answering to questions such as “What is the ultimate precision attainable by a quantum clock in timekeeping?” and “How to build more energy-efficient quantum devices?” is paramount not only for current and future quantum technologies, but will also shed light on the limitations imposed by nature on precise measurements.
Such limitations are given by the so-called Thermodynamic Uncertainty Relations (TUR), which reveal that higher precision in a measurement can only be achieved if the dissipation rate increases. In other words: Precision has a Thermodynamic Cost. ASPECTS’ research is focused on exploiting the laws of Quantum Thermodynamics in order to allow higher measurement precision for less energy and entropy cost. ASPECTS will address these questions using several state-of-the-art experimental platforms, from semiconductor devices that allow for the control of single electrons able to oscillate as a quartz clock, to superconducting circuits arranged as a novel, one-of-a-kind quantum machines.
The theoretical group at the University of Malta, led by Dr Apollaro, will complement ASPECTS’ research via its expertise in quantum many-body systems, non-Markovian dynamics and quantum information theory.
The consortium will also organise the Qalypso Summer School 2024: Precision in Quantum Information & Computation in Malta which will boost the Maltese Quantum Ecosystem and provide an unique opportunity for Maltese scholars to liaise with international top researchers and private companies active in the burgeoning field of Quantum Technologies.
More information is available on the ASPECTS website.
This project is co-funded by the European Union’s Programme HORIZON.2.4 - Digital, Industry and Space project ASPECTS (Grant agreement ID: 101080167).
Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
