About QUINST

Quantum mechanics is at the heart of our technology and economy - the laser and the transistor are quantum devices - but its full potential is far from being realized. Recent technological advances in optics, nanoscience and engineering allow experimentalists to create artificial structures or put microscopic and mesoscopic systems under new manipulable conditions in which quantum phenomena play a fundamental role.

Quantum technologies exploit these effects with practical purposes. The objective of Quantum Science is to discover, study, and control quantum efects at a fundamental level. These are two sides of a virtuous circle: new technologies lead to the discovery and study of new phenomena that will lead to new technologies.

Our aim is  to control and understand quantum phenomena in a multidisciplinary intersection of  Quantum Information, Quantum optics and cold atoms, Quantum Control, Spintronics, Quantum metrology, Atom interferometry, Superconducting qubits and Circuit QED and Foundations of Quantum Mechanics.

QUINST is funded in part as a “Grupo Consolidado” from the Basque Government (IT472-10, IT986-16, IT1470-22)  and functions as a network of groups with their own funding, structure, and specific goals.  

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Latest events

Seminar Seminar

Prof. Gert-Ludwig Ingold (University of Augsburg, Germany)

When and where

From: 12/2013 To: 12/2016

Description

2012/09/10, Prof. Gert-Ludwig Ingold (University of Augsburg, Germany)


Place:  Sala de Seminarios del Departamento de Física Teórica e Historia de la Ciencia
Time:  12h
Title:   Casimir effect and quantum dissipation
 
 
Abstract
 
Vacuum fluctuations of the electromagnetic field can give rise to a force between mirrors,
the so-called Casimir effect, which becomes important at distances of micrometers and
below. The Casimir force therefore is relevant in the context of micro- and nanoelectromechanical
systems and for tests of the gravitational force in the submicrometer regime. For a quantitative
account of the Casimir effect, the properties of real mirrors have to be considered. It turns out
that under certain circumstances negative entropies can occur. We will discuss the origin of this
effect for a parallel-plate geometry and make connection to the thermodynamics of a quantum
Brownian particle.