Wittgenstein Award Laureate
Wittgenstein Award Laureate 1998 Univ. Prof. Dr. Peter Zoller
Theoretical quantum optics and quantum information, University of Innsbruck
Peter Zoller Curriculum, Scientific Career 
Institut für Theoretische Physik ITP Universität Innsbruck
FACE TO FACE WITH SINGLE LIGHT QUANTA
Peter Zoller is studying theoretical quantum optics at the University of Innsbruck. Quantum optics is that branch of optics dealing with quantum phenomena, the interaction of atoms and photons. ”The most important advances in recent years,” says Zoller, ”have been the storing and cooling of individual atoms and their interaction with light quanta. It was for the first time possible in the laboratory to generate systems that can be manipulated and measured at the level of single quanta atoms and photons.” Following the departure of Anton Zeilinger to Vienna, Zoller has been working closely with his Innsbruck colleagues, the German Rainer Blatt and the Spaniard Ignacio Cirac. The group has developed fundamental concepts showing how controlled quantum states can be produced and manipulated in such systems in a type of ”quantum engineering”.
Zoller has made several research stays abroad. Among the most influential of these he numbers a Max Kade Fellowship at the University of Southern California and above all two Visiting Fellowships to the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics (JILA) of the University of Colorado. He also paid several visits to various universities in New Zealand where he encountered ”friends of theory” who greatly influenced him. The connection with JILA led to the offer of a position as tenured Professor of Physics there. Because of the promise of first-rate cooperation with his colleagues he turned down offers from Harvard and Ulm.
One of the distant consequences of the work in Innsbruck is the so-called quantum computer. At the start of the 1990s this ”weirdest computer of all” (The Economist) was no more than a vague idea based on a theoretically enormous storage capacity. Cirac and Zoller developed the first realistic proposal of how something along these lines could be built in a laboratory, namely with stored ions. ”Leading research labs are taking up the challenge of realizing our idea and there has been considerable progress in the past few years. Among the most important experimenters are Rainer Blatt and his group in Innsbruck.”
Zoller was Professor and JILA Fellow in Colorado until the end of 1994, when he accepted the offer of a position in Innsbruck. In 1998 he was awarded a Wittgenstein Prize. The recognition in his home country was particularly gratifying, ”because the Prize is awarded on objective criteria and by an international commission.” Unfortunately, the reduction in bureaucracy associated with support for several years was more than offset, ”by the fact that you are suddenly chosen as organiser of this and that, such as a Joint Research Programme.”
Nevertheless, Peter Zoller is able to report some novel developments in his work. ”Our proposals to implement quantum information with neutral atoms; proposals for fast quantum gates, initial ideas on how to realize such ideas with ensembles of atoms, i.e. no longer with single atoms. In physics the question of whether Bose Einstein condensations of atomic gases can be developed as a new tool for quantum information is particularly important. We recently published a paper in Nature on this issue.” More details are naturally provided on his home page.
