Video Portraits of the MPQ Divisions

Gerhard Rempe and his team investigate the quantum world - in the form of individual atoms and molecules - and its effects for future applications, in particular the processing and communication of (quantum) information.

Deep in the micro cosmos, time dimensions are extremely short. Electrons in atoms and molecules move within only a few attoseconds, which are billionths of a billionth of a second. In order to see and investigate these motions, Ferenc Krausz and his group create ultrashort flashes of light which also last only a couple of attoseconds.

For his ground breaking invention of the laser frequency comb Theodor Hänsch was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2005. In his Laser Spectroscopy group at MPQ and LMU, Theodor Hänsch uses modern tools from laser science, nonlinear optics and photonics to open a sharp window into the microcosmos and gain new and fundamental insights into atomic and molecular physics, and the physics of light.

In his group Quantum Many Body Systems, Immanuel Bloch aims at understanding the interaction and dynamics in quantum systems with many particles, and engineering and exploiting them for quantum simulation and quantum information purposes. He is a specialist in quantum simulation and one of the founders of this experimental field.

In his Theory group, Ignacio Cirac and his team are among other things reasoning about the strange and paradox phenomena of the quantum world that challenge all our intuition - like entanglement, superposition and tunneling. How can these phenomena be used to transmit information with ever greater efficiency and security?