Raphael Benz was honoured for one of the three best Master's degrees
Stuttgart, 7 February 2025. Once a year, the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics at the University of Stuttgart awards prizes for outstanding degrees in mathematics and physics during the graduation ceremony. This year, Raphael Benz was honored with the 2nd place in the best Master's degree category. In addition to the final grade, the duration of study was also taken into account when awarding the prize.
Raphael wrote his master's thesis ‘Dual-Species Atomic Beam Source for Lithium and Rubidium’ at the 5th Institute of Physics. Using the pulsed ion microscope developed at the institute, which enables the detection of charged particles beyond the optical diffraction limit with high resolution in an environment with excellent electric field control, only one species of atoms - Rubidium - could be analyzed so far. In his work, he presents a system that generates a stream of lithium and rubidium atoms that can be superimposed and analyzed together. With this extension, it will be possible in future to investigate molecules made up of rubidium and lithium atoms with the high-resolution ion microscope and thus conduct molecular physics in the quantum range.
In November 2024, Raphael started a PhD project in the ‘Quantum Network Node’ group of Dr Stephan Welte, which is funded by the Carl Zeiss Foundation Center QPhoton and the Emmy Noether Program of the German Research Foundation DFG.
CZS and Emmy Noether Junior Research Group ‚Quantum Network Node‘
Christian Hölzl receives the Wilhelm and Else Heraeus Dissertation Award
The Department of Physics at the University of Stuttgart awards the prize, which is endowed with 4,000 euros and funded by the Wilhelm and Else Heraeus Foundation, annually as a special honour to doctoral students who have achieved outstanding research results in their dissertation.
Christian 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.
This is the second time his doctoral thesis has been honoured. In the ‘Quantum Future Award’ competition of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) he reached second place in the PhD category. (News from 29.11.2024)