News & Events

We present a simple, cost-effective, yet instructive spectrometer for use in undergraduate instructional laboratory courses. Deliberate design choices are made to enhance the learning experience provided by the setup, where every component is accessible to students, allowing them to fully understand the function of each individual item.  

In an atomically thin stack of semiconductors, a mechanism unseen in any natural substance causes electrons’ spins to align.

The magnetic properties of materials usually originate from exchange interactions between their electrons, but researchers at ETH Zurich in Switzerland have now discovered a new type of magnetism that disobeys this rule. Known as kinetic magnetism, and previously only predicted theoretically, the new mechanism occurs in a regime where the strength of electron exchange interactions vanishes.  

ETH Zurich researchers have detected a new type of magnetism in an artificially produced material. The material becomes ferromagnetic through minimization of the kinetic energy of its electrons.

Resonant excitation of a thin-film semiconductor leads to impurities that attract rather than repel each other, providing a possible tool for manipulating superconductivity.

This year’s ETH award for particularly innovative teaching projects goes to a course that brings physics experiments for students right into their home. The project was up against 24 others competing for the KITE Award 2022.    

Twisted bilayer systems have emerged as a powerful platform for studying quantum correlations.

In den vergangenen Jahren haben sich geeignet konstruierte Stapel zweidimensionaler Materialien als eine vielseitige Plattform für das Studium von Quantenkorrelation zwischen elektronischen Zuständen herausgebildet.

Exploring the properties and behaviours of strongly interacting quantum particles is one of the frontiers of modern physics.

In the past few years, suitably engineered stacks of two-​dimensional materials have emerged as a powerful platform for studying quantum correlations between electronic states.

In einem zweidimensionalen Halbleiter können Elektronen aufgrund ihrer abstoßenden Wechselwirkung in einen regulären Wigner-Kristall kondensieren.  

Exotic electronic states called Wigner crystals, in which mutual repulsion between electrons causes them to spontaneously form ordered arrangements, have been observed independently by two groups nearly 80 years after they were first predicted. The researchers argue their results, using a new type of spectroscopy, are more conclusive than previous observations.

Researchers at ETH Zurich have created a crystal made entirely of electrons. The structures have been theorized for decades, but this marks the first time they’ve been experimentally confirmed in the lab.

Researchers at ETH Zurich have succeeded in observing a crystal that consists only of electrons. Such Wigner crystals were already predicted almost ninety years ago but could only now be observed directly in a semiconductor material.  

Congratulation to Dr. Andrea Bergschneider for winning the Extraordinary Teaching Award for the development and teaching of a new „Experiment at Home“ within the Beginners Physics Lab in Response to the Covid‐19 Lock‐Down: Acoustic waves and measurement of the sound velocity

In a material made of two thin crystal layers that are slightly twisted with respect to each other, researchers at ETH have studied the behaviour of strongly interacting electrons. Doing so, they found a number of surprising properties.  

In quasiparticles known as polaritons, states of light and matter are strongly coupled. The group of Prof. Ataç İmamoğlu has now developed a new approach to study nonlinear optical properties of polaritons in strongly correlated electronic states.

Light particles normally do not «feel» each other because there is no interaction acting between them. Researchers at ETH have now succeeded in manipulating photons inside a semiconductor material in such a way as to make them repel each other nevertheless.   

Light particles do not usually react to magnetic fields. Researchers at ETH Zurich have now shown how photons can still be influenced by electric and magnetic fields.

Electrons in a solid can team up to form so-called quasiparticles, which lead to new phenomena. Physicists at ETH in Zurich have now studied previously unidentified quasiparticles in a new class of atomically thin semiconductors. The researchers use their results to correct a prevailing misinterpretation.

Entanglement between distant quantum objects is an important ingredient for future information technologies.

December 2015. Sylvain Ravets has been awarded an ETH Zurich Postdoctoral fellowship! The “ETH Zurich Postdoctoral Fellowship Program” provides young incoming postdoctoral researchers with two years of support, as a result of a highly competitive selection process. The project is co-funded by the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration.

November 2015. Sylvain Ravets has been awarded a DIM nano-K prize for his thesis “Development of tools for quantum engineering using individual atoms: optical nanofibers and controlled Rydberg interactions.”

Quantum Photonics Group at Scientifica 2015

Seven ETH researchers awarded grants

With a combination of solid-state physics and quantum optics, ETH researchers observe new multiparticle states that so far defied a complete theoretical description. The experiments might be the first step towards developing quantum computers based on photons.

The ultrathin material graphene is the current favourite of many materials scientists.

A team of researchers headed by Atac Imamoglu, a professor of quantum photonics, has succeeded in “entangling” an “artificial atom” and a light particle for the first time in a semi-conductor system. This is an important step on the road towards a new form of telecommunication based on quantum physics.

In Zukunft könnten in der Informationstechnologie Transistoren zum Einsatz kommen, die mit Licht statt mit Strom funktionieren.

Storing quantum information correctly and permanently has not been possible thus far.