Congratulations to Immanuel Bloch! Together with his colleague, the American physicist Jun Ye, Immanuel Bloch has been awarded the Wolf Prize. The Wolf Foundation is honoring the two researchers for their “groundbreaking, widely applicable advances in the control of ultracold atomic systems.”
Immanuel Bloch’s research is characterised by a fundamental challenge in modern physics: understanding the behaviour of complex quantum many-body systems consisting of interacting particles. Such systems play an important role, among other things, in the properties of solids and novel quantum materials. However, their dynamics are so complex, even with a relatively small number of particles, that they can only be calculated to a limited extent using classical computers. Bloch and his team have made a decisive contribution to establishing a different experimental approach to such systems through what is known as quantum simulation.
“Immanuel Bloch and Jun Ye have been pushing the frontiers of our insight into and control of the behaviour of ultracold matter at a breathtaking pace over the past two decades and the Wolf Prize is a well-deserved recognition of their pioneering role in advancing this central field of quantum science”, said Ferenc Krausz, managing director of MPQ.
Photo: Jan Greune/MPQ, Artwork: Christine Wolf/MPQ
