which will be held on April 11, 2025, at the University of Milano-Bicocca.
📍 Venue: Aula Sironi, Building U4, Piazza della Scienza 4, 20126 Milano
🕘 Date: Friday, April 11, 2025; 9.30 - 17.00
This one-day event marks the conclusion of the SMART-electron project, funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (Grant No. 964591). The project has developed a novel platform for programmable, all-optical phase masks for electrons, opening new frontiers in ultrafast electron beam shaping and advanced materials characterization.
The symposium will bring together leading scientists working across:
– Quantum technologies
– Ultrafast nanophotonics
– Advanced Electron microscopy
– Materials Science and Bioscience
🔬 Invited speakers: Dirk Van Der Marel (University of Geneva), Caterina Vozzi (CNR-IFN), Lorenzo Maccone (University of Pavia), F. Javier García de Abajo (ICFO), Vincenzo Grillo (CNR-Nano), Fabrizio Carbone (EPFL), Anthony Fitzpatrick (Columbia University).
The event is organized jointly by the Department of Materials Science at the University of Milano-Bicocca and by the Bicocca Quantum Technologies (BiQuTe) Centre.
We look forward to welcoming you to Milano for a day of engaging scientific exchange and forward-looking discussion.
🔗 More information: www.smartelectron.eu
🔗 Flyer
As we celebrate the International Year of Quantum Technologies, the International school on Mid-InfraRed technologies for Quantum sensing (MIRQ) provides a unique opportunity to explore the latest developments in mid-infrared quantum sensing. Participants will engage in lectures, hands-on activities, and discussions led by leading experts in the field. The program is designed for PhD students, postdoctoral researchers, and early-career scientists working in quantum optics, photonics, and related disciplines.
📍 Location: Como, Italy (Lake Como School for Advanced Studies)
📅 Dates: July 28 – August 1, 2025
📌 Topics: Mid-infrared photonics, quantum sensing, technology transfer
We welcome applicants from diverse backgrounds and encourage participation from those eager to deepen their knowledge and connect with peers in this rapidly evolving field.
Sensing with Nitrogen-vacancy centers, where a single spin defect in diamond is used as an atomic scale magnetic field sensor, is seeing increased adoption through the academic community. The capabilities of the NV as a sensor, however, offer much more than the quantitative mapping of weak magnetic fields. In this talk I will present our most recent progress towards the development of scanning NV technology as a commercial product to image weak DC as well as AC fields with resolution approaching the nanometer scale and speeds that are comparable with other SPM techniques. I will also show how in recent years, NV sensing has been proven to be a powerful technique to perform surface analysis beyond conventional magnetometry. Applications of the technique include imaging of antiferromagnetic films, skyrmions, multiferroics, surface current density, spin waves and FMR resonances, magnetic noise as well as microwave field imaging. In the last part of the talk I will also discuss applications for failure analysis of nanoscale devices and magnetic memories.
slides - video recording
Plenary speaker
Antonio Mezzacapo - IBM
Marco Pistoia - JP Morgan 16:00-17:30
Tavola rotonda:
Matteo Menotti - Xanadu Quantum Technologies
Antonio Mezzacapo - IBM
Elisabetta Paladino - NQSTI
Marco Pistoia - JP Morgan
Andrea Rocchetto - EPHOS
Jacopo Drudi - United Ventures
Modera: Chiara Albicocco
Invited speakers:
- Markus Aspelmeyer, University of Vienna & Austrian Academy of Sciences
- Fabio Beltram, Scuola Normale Superiore Pisa
- Simone Gasparinetti, Chalmers University of Technology
- Sven Hӧfling, University of Würzburg
- Lorenzo Pavesi, University of Trento
The Quantum Technologies and Dark Matter research laboratory has a rich history of developing precision tools, including the development and application of novel low-loss and highly sensitive resonant photonic and phononic cavities, such as whispering gallery and re-entrant cavities, as well as photonic band gap and bulk acoustic wave structures. These cavities have been used in a range of applications, including highly stable low noise classical and atomic oscillators, low noise measurement systems, highly sensitivity displacement sensors, high precision electron spin resonance and spin-wave spectroscopy, high precision measurement of material properties and applications of low-loss quantum hybrid systems, which are strongly coupled to form polaritons or quasi-particles. Translational applications have included the realization of the lowest noise oscillators and systems for advance radar, the enabling of high accuracy atomic clocks and sensitive transducers for precision measurements.
Meanwhile, there is currently a world-wide renascence to adapt precision and quantum measurement techniques to major unsolved problems in physics and discover “Beyond Standard Model” physics. Our technology has been adapted to realize precision measurement tools and techniques to test some of these core aspects of fundamental physics, such as low energy searches for wave-like dark matter, test of quantum gravity from the possible modification of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, the search for high frequency gravitational waves, Lorentz invariance violations in the photon, phonon and gravity sectors and possible variations in fundamental constants. An overview of our current experimental program will be presented, including status, recent experiments, and future directions.
indico - slides - video recording
This innovative colloquium aims to explore the paradigm shift in Electron Microscopy, moving beyond high-resolution imaging and spectra to harness the quantum nature of electrons for advanced imaging methods and spectroscopic tools. By discussing electron-beam shaping and coherent wave function engineering, participants will gain insights into new research possibilities in condensed matter and nano-photonics.
The SMART-electron Colloquium will take place within the 30th General Conference of the Condensed Matter Division of the European Physical Society (EPS), held jointly with FisMat, the biennial conference of the Italian community of condensed matter physics, optics, liquids, and soft matter (https://eventi.cnism.it/cmd30-fismat).
We revisit the problem of surface states in semiconductors with inverted-band structures, such as α-Sn and HgTe. We unravel the confusion that arose over the past decade regarding the origin of the surface states, their topological nature, and the role of strain. Within a single minimalistic description, we reconcile different solutions found in the 1980s with the results obtained from modern-day numerical simulations, allowing us to unambiguously identify all branches of surface states around the Г point of the Brillouin zone in different regimes.
We consider biaxial in-plane strain that is either tensile or compressive, leading to different branches of surface states for topological insulators (TIs) and Dirac semimetals (DSMs), respectively. We show that in TI regime strain is a smooth deformation to the surface states not leading to any drastic change of the physical properties in these materials, in contrast to what has recently been advanced in the literature. In DSM regime, however, strain strongly changes the surface state spectrum.
We have also considered the surface states in HgTe material under an in-plane compressive strain and taking into account a bulk inversion asymmetry, which leads to a nodal-line-semimetal regime. Again, these results are qualitatively different from the ones previously published.
Our model can help in interpreting numerous experiments on topological surface states originating from inverted-band semiconductors.
slides - video recording
After a brief review of the main points of continuous photodetection measurement theory we will investigate a system made of an "artificial atom," a transmon qubit, in a resonant cavity. By treating the cavity as a quantum system, we will present a new short-time regime of the quantum evolution and a new fast qubit readout scheme, different from heterodyne readout and potentially competitive with it. We will also show how a proper treatment of the measurement process dramatically affects the dynamics of a 3-level atom (or a 3-state transmon) by creating a "quantum telegraph" effect, in which long quiescent periods with no photon emissions alternate with bright periods.
poster - slides - video recording
Quantum entanglement comes in a variety of different forms and measures with different conceptual and operational interpretations. In this talk I will review some of the most relevant definitions of entanglement, the different physical effects that they characterize, and their use in the study of quantum many-body systems and models of quantum statistical mechanics.
The broad and vibrant field of semiconductor nanostructures produces significant breakthroughs in semiconductor technology where Moore's law hits quantum mechanics. Nanostructured semiconductor materials exhibit fascinating new physical properties, which can be applied to quantum devices and technologies.
The first three days of the workshop are dedicated to different aspects of quantum materials and technologies