Every year since 2018, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) honours the best master’s and doctoral theses in the field of applied quantum technologies with the Quantum Future Award. With his doctoral thesis and a three-minute pitch live in Berlin, Christian Hölz was able to convince the expert jury from politics, science, and business, who awarded him second place in the PhD category.
Christian Hölzl wrote his PhD thesis on the ‘Realization of Alkaline-Earth Circular Rydberg Qubits in Optical Tweezer Arrays’ in the Quantum Länd team of Dr. Florian Meinert at the 5th Institute of Physics. In his research, he tackles the fundamental Rydberg lifetime limitations, state-of-the-art neutral-atom quantum simulators and computers are facing. His new approach makes use of so-called circular Rydberg states (CRSs). By combining all the benefits of CRSs and alkaline-earth atoms in a room-temperature optical tweezer setup, he successfully developed and realized a new kind of quantum simulator experiment. Hölzl’s work opens the door to quantum simulations relying on long coherence times, such as adiabatic preparation of strongly correlated many-body quantum states, and to novel CRS-based qubit concepts. Furthermore, the second active electron of the circular Rydberg atom’s ionic core provides novel and unique control knobs for laser cooling, imaging, or coherent optical manipulation of Rydberg atoms.
The jury recognised the high practical relevance of Hölzl’s research and awarded his doctoral thesis the second prize, which is endowed with 4,000 Euro for study trips.
„The prize is a great honor of the work that I and my team have done” says Hölzl.
Quantum Future Award 2024: Pitch of Christian Hölzl
Photo: Patrick Pfeiffer