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| Name |
Aeppli, Gabriel |
| Location
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ETH Zurich |
| Primary Field
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Applied Physical Sciences |
| Secondary Field
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Physics |
 Election Citation
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Aeppli is a world-leader in experimental studies of quantum magnetism. He showed that collective quantum effects have significant implications in many areas, from metals and insulators with properties unanticipated by ordinary solid state theory to quantum computation. He has also pioneered the microscopic examination of magnetic fluctuations in superconductors. |
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Research Interests
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Aeppli's scientific research is currently focused on the applications of nanotechnology and photon science to biomedicine and quantum information processing. Projects include the development of optical and microwave tools for medical diagnostics and pharmacology, where we are interested in new drug-target and antibody-antigen binding assays. We pay particular attention to obtaining specific, quantitative results, as well as to ease of use and (eventual) low cost for our engineered systems. Photons are also at the heart of efforts to control and read out quantum states in solids, including especially silicon, for which we exploit coherent, tunable pulses of THz radiation from a free electron laser. Our most recent work (2015) describes the electrical detection of coherent orbital superpositions in a commercial silicon wafer. A related topic is adiabatic quantum computing, where calculations are performed by mapping problems onto networks of bits, and then relaxing the networks via quantum mechanics. This procedure is most easily modeled in the limits of very large networks using magnets (although programmable medium size networks containing of order 1000 bits are now being implemented using superconducting junctions), where the bits correspond to Ising spins with either up or down magnetization, and quantum mechanics is introduced via a "transverse" field, which allows tunneling between the up and down states. |
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