Newsroom

Information and safety instructions for all scientists, employees and guests at MPQ more

We remember Prof. Dr. Peter Toschek, who died in Hamburg on June 25, 2020, at the age of 87. He was a pioneer of quantum research and laser spectroscopy and was the doctoral supervisor of MPQ director and Nobel laureate Theodor Hänsch: "With Peter Toschek we have lost an admirable scholar and researcher as well as an incomparable person." more

For his seminal and pioneering work in the area of quantum thermodynamics which “significantly improved our understanding of how fundamental thermodynamic processes behave in the quantum regime", Martí Perarnau Llobet, former postdoc in Ignacio Cirac's theory group, has received the NJP Early Career Award. more

Physicists at the MPQ have engineered the lightest optical mirror imaginable. The novel metamaterial is made of a single structured layer consisting only of a few hundred identical atoms arranged in the two dimensional array of an optical lattice formed by interfering laser beams. So far, the mirror is the only one of its kind.  more

An international team of physicists from the Ludwig-Maximilians Universität (LMU) and the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics together with collaborators from the University of Cambridge, TU Berlin and the Université Libre de Bruxelles succeeded in realizing a novel genuine time-dependent topological system with ultracold atoms in periodically-driven optical honeycomb lattices. more

Semiconductors play an important role, be it in electronics, optoelectronics or photovoltaics. But like other solid bodies, they are quantum many-body systems. Therefore, a calculation of their material properties would overburden conventional computers. Instead, this task could be performed by a quantum system with comparable properties that is fully controllable from the outside. more

Flore Kunst, postdoc in Ignacio Cirac's Theory Group, is awarded with the "Oseen Medal" for the best doctoral thesis. After being named "Female Physicist of the Week" by the German Physical Society (DFG) in March 2020, this is already the second award the talented young scientist has been honoured with this year more

Prof. Immanuel Bloch is head of the Quantum Many-Body Systems division at MPQ and chairholder of the physics faculty at the LMU Munich. With the start of 2020 he also became Managing Director of the institute. Here he speaks about his plans for his two-year term of office, about the future of quantum optics, and his very personal path to physics. more

The 16th of May we celebrate three events: the 60th birthday of the laser, the international day of light and the 25th jubilee of the famous paper of Ignacio Cirac and Peter Zoller on how to build a quantum computer with trapped ions - an epochal milestone on the way into the second quantum revolution. Join us for a series of labtours, live talks and quantum quizzes. more

Physicists of the Laboratory for Attosecond Physics have measured the flight times of electrons in molecules after their creation with light. The small quantum particles were emitted from a specific atom within the molecules, which enabled to measure the molecular influence on their emission time. The results open new opportunities to study the forces that are holding molecules together in better detail. more

Frequently asked questions and answers about the current regulations at MPQ for all employees.

*this page is constantly updated. more

MPQ Scientists opened a new window into the quantum world. After eight years they succeeded in a challenging experiment with PSI and CERN: they created an artificial atom, the so-called pionic helium, in which the shortlived pion can survive a thousand times longer than in usually does. more