Every year the Bank Austria foundation for science and research at the University of Vienna promotes young researches and their innovative projects from different kinds of research fields. These projects should be of high actuality, handle an innovative topic and be of practical relevance.
For 2010 Simon Gröblacher, Michael Vanner - both PhD-Students at the University of Vienna and Klemens Hammerer - post doc at the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) in Innsbruck - have been awarded with the main prize for the research project „Observation of strong coupling between a micromechanical resonator and an optical cavity field. This project was carried out in the Group of Prof. Markus Aspelmeyer at the University of Vienna and was published in the prestigious journal Nature in September last year.
With this work they set a milestone in the research field of quantum-opto-mechanic. For the first time they observed optomechanical normal mode splitting, which provides unambiguous evidence for strong coupling of cavity photons to a mechanical resonator. This paves the way towards full quantum optical control of nano- and micromechanical devices and will be essential for future preparation of mechanical quantum states such as squeezed or entangled states and also for using mechanical resonators in the context of quantum information processing, for example, as quantum transducers.
The award ceremony took place on the "Dies Academicus" on 12th March 2010 at the University of Vienna.
S.Gröblacher, K.Hammerer, M.R.Vanner, M.Aspelmeyer "Observation of strong coupling between a micromechanical resonator and an optical cavity field" Nature 460 (2009) 724-727