IUPAP C17: Commission on Laser Physics and Photonics
Report to IUPAP Council and Commission Chairs Electronic Meeting, October/November 2015
IUPAP C17 Young Scientist Prize
The IUPAP Commission on Laser Physics and Photonics runs its Young Scientist Prizes every two years, awarding two prizes in each round. These two prizes recognize the very highest level of achievements in fundamental and applied research. The 2015 prizes attracted 12 nominations, 9 male, 3 female. Geographical spread included Australia(3), Austria(1), Belgium(1), Canada(1), Chile(1), New Zealand(1), Spain(2), United Kingdom(1), USA(1).
The 2015 IUPAP Young Scientist Prize in Laser Physics and Photonics (Applied Aspects) was awarded to Dr Mark Thompson, Centre for Quantum Photonics, University of Bristol, United Kingdom. Dr Mark Thompson was awarded the prize “for his contributions to the new and emerging field of quantum photonics, and particularly for his pioneering work in integrated quantum photonic circuits.”
The 2015 IUPAP Young Scientist Prize in Laser Physics and Photonics (Fundamental Aspects) was awarded to Dr Robert Fickler, Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information, University of Vienna, Austria. Robert Fickler was awarded “for his groundbreaking contributions to the entanglement of complex structures of photons, which have opened up new avenues for quantum communication”.
The award ceremony was held at CLEO/Europe – EQEC 2015 on 23rd June 2015 in Munich. http://www.cleoeurope.org/ . The award winners gave an interview with the C17 Chair on the day of the wards. The transcripts are included in Appendix C. This copy was submitted for possible inclusion in the IUPAP Newsletter.
Next call for the IUPAP C17 Young Scientist Prizes will be launched towards the end of 2016 for 2017. A longer term schedule of the major international conferences at which the prizes will be awarded, which also fulfill IUPAP requirements, is to be put in place before the call for nominations in 2016.
International Year of Light (and Light Based Technologies) 2015
The International Year is being celebrated extensively around the globe. The official website lists activities and documents the year: http://www.light2015.org/Home.html
91 National Nodes which are organising local campaigns, activities and events are also listed http://www.light2015.org/Home/About/Country.html
One of the very first events was inclusion of IYL related projections in the Sydney Harbour Bridge Pylon Displays on New Year’s Eve. http://light2015.org.au/year-of-lights-starts-at-sydney-nye- fireworks/ The Sydney Harbour Bridge Icon turned on at midnight, a LED based display, featured a light bulb – in keeping with the theme of Sydney NYE2014 (Inspire Sydney) and IYL.
The official launch for IYL was held at the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris 19-20 January 2015. http://www.light2015.org/Home/About/Resources/Videos.html Prof Cristina Masoller attended as a representative of C17. Previous Chair, Prof Alan Shore (2008-2011) also attended as representative for Wales. Reports of the launch are reproduced in Appendix B. A copy of the program for the launch can be provided to anyone who would like it.
The International Year of Light is being heralded as the most successful “International Year” with a science theme that has occurred to date. The daily blog is being widely disseminated and the event count is increasing by 10-20 a day.
Laser Physicist/Research Leader Joins the Greek Government
Well known research leader in the European laser physics and photonics community, Professor Costas Fotakis, previously a Director of the Institute of Electronic Structure and Laser (IESL) at the Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas (FORTH) in Crete, Greece and then elected as President of FORTH in 2011 started a new phase of his career as the Deputy Minister for Research and Innovation in the new Greek Government, January 2015. http://greece.greekreporter.com/2015/02/01/who-is-who-in-the-new- greek-government/ Should we think of creating a directory of “Physics Angels” – those who have a physics background and/or strong interest in
physics who have become influencers and who can be neutral supporters of physics? A strong, collective, disinterested voice from such a grouping could help to raise awareness of the contribution of physics to society.
http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/v14/n9/full/nmat4403.html
Associate Members of C17
For the period 2016-2018 the proposed Associate Members are as follows
A member to represent the Joint Council of Quantum Electronics (specific person tbc)
A member representing ICO (specific person tbc)
A member representing IYL legacy (Professor John Dudley)
Ongoing Work of the Commission in 2015
Undertake a review of C17 conference support and ensure that networking occurs via which appropriate conferences are forthcoming in applications for support.
Support the international Year of Light strongly. Plan for longer term beneficial legacies of the year.
Appendix A. Commission Membership 2014-2017 Officers:
Chair, Prof. Deborah Kane (2011) (2014) Department of Physics and Astronomy Faculty of Science
Macquarie University NSW 2109 AUSTRALIA
Phone: +61-20-9850-8907; Fax: +61-2-9850-8115
E-mail: debkane@physics.mq.edu.au; deb.kane@mq.edu.au
Vice Chair, Prof. Cristina Masoller (2011) (2014) Departament de Física i Enginyeria Nuclear Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya
Colom 11
Terrassa 08222, Barcelona
SPAIN
Tel: +34 937398507; Fax: +34 937398500
Email: cristina.masoller@upc.edu
Secretary, Prof. Gong Qihuang (2011) (2014) Department of Physics
Peking University Beijing 100871 CHINA
Tel: +86 10 6276 5884
Fax: +86 10 6275 2540
Email: qhgong@pku.edu.cn
Past Chair, Prof. Victor Zadkov (2011)(2008) Vice-Dean, Faculty of Physics
Vice-Director, International Laser Center M.V.Lomonosov Moscow State University Moscow 119992, RUSSIA
Phone: +7(495)939-23-71; Fax: +7(495)932-98-02
E-mail: zadkov@phys.msu.ru; zadkov@gmail.com
Members:
Prof. D Narayana Rao (2011) (2014) School of Physics
University of Hyderabad Prof. C.R.Rao Road
Gachibowli Hyderabad 500 046 India
Tel: +91 40 23134335
Email: dnrsp@uohyd.ernet.in
Prof. Tamás Kiss (2011) (2014) Wigner Research Centre for Physics
Department for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information Konkoly-Thege Miklós út 29-33
H-1121 Budapest Hungary
Tel: +36 1 3922222
Email: kiss.tamas@wigner.mta.hu
Prof. Klaus Richter (2014) University of Regensburg Theoretical Physics
93040 Regensburg Germany
Tel: +49 941 9432029
Email: klaus.richter@physik.uni-regensburg.de
Prof. Hidetoshi Katori (2014) University of Tokyo
7-3-1 Hongo
Bunkyo-ku Tokyo
113-0033
Japan
Tel: +81 90 12592703
Email: katori@amo.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp
Prof. Ortwin Hess (2014) The Blackett Laboratory Imperial College London Department of Physics London SW7 2AZ United Kingdom
Tel: +44 20 75942077
Email: o.hess@imperial.ac.uk
Prof. Carlo Sirtori (2014) Université Paris-Diderot Laboratoire MPQ
Batiment Condorcet, Case courrier 7021 75205 Paris
France
Tel: +33 6 84865854
Email: carlo.sirtori@univ-paris-diderot.fr
Dr Thaddeus Ladd (2014) HRL Laboratories
3011 Malibu Canyon Rd Malibu, California 90265 United States
Tel: +1 310 3175000
Email: tdladd@hrl.com
Prof. Roberto Pini (2014) IFAC – CNR
Via Madonna del Piano 10 50019 Sesto Fiorentino (FI) Italy
Tel: +39 3204316616
Email: r.pini@ifac.cnr.it
Prof. Arkadiusz (Arek) Wojs (2014) Institute of Physics
Faculty for Fundamental Problems in Technology Wroclaw University of Technology
50-370 Wroclaw, ul. Wybrzeze Wyspianskiego 27 Poland
Tel: +48 71 3202394
Email: arkadiusz.wojs@pwr.edu.pl
Prof. Tsuneyuki Ozaki (2014)
INRS-EMT, 1650, boul. Lionel-Boulet
Varennes, Quebec J3X 1S2 Canada
Tel: +1 514 2286858
Email: ozaki@emt.inrs.ca
Prof. Mikhail Fedorov (2014) Prokhorov General Physics Institute 38 Vavilova st.
119991, Moscow Russian Federation Tel: +7 915 3769335
Email: fedorovmv@gmail.com
Appendix B. Report on Official Launch of IYL in Paris from Australian Optical Society News
(first one with the permission of the author, Ben Eggleton)
Appendix C
IUPAP Laser Physics and Photonics Young Scientist Prizes 2015
The IUPAP Commission on Laser Physics and Photonics runs its Young Scientist Prizes every two years, awarding two prizes in each round. These represent the very highest level of achievements in fundamental and applied research.
The 2015 IUPAP Young Scientist Prize in Laser Physics and Photonics (Applied Aspects) has been won by Dr Mark Thompson, Centre for Quantum Photonics, University of Bristol, United Kingdom. Dr Mark Thompson is awarded the prize “for his contributions to the new and emerging field of quantum photonics, and particularly for his pioneering work in integrated quantum photonic circuits.” He did his Master of Physics at the University of Sheffield, United Kingdom, finishing in 2000. He completed his PhD in 2007 at the University of Cambridge, UK, in the Department of Electrical Engineering. Subsequently he has held postdoctoral fellow positions at the University of Cambridge, University of Bristol, UK; and Toshiba, Japan. He was appointed as a lecturer in the School of Physics, University of Bristol, UK, in 2010 and is now a Reader in Quantum Photonics and Director of the Quantum Engineering Centre for Doctoral Training.
The 2015 IUPAP Young Scientist Prize in Laser Physics and Photonics (Fundamental Aspects) was won by Dr Robert Fickler, Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information, University of Vienna, Austria. Dr Fiickler moved very recently to a postdoctoral fellowship in the Centre for Quantum Photonics, University of Ottawa, Canada. Robert Fickler is awarded “for his groundbreaking contributions to the entanglement of complex structures of photons, which have opened up new avenues for quantum communication”. He completed his Bachelor and Masters degrees (in Physics) at the University of Ulm, Germany, finishing in 2009. He completed his PhD in 2014 at the University of Vienna in the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information. His thesis, entitled “Entanglement of Complex Structures of Photons”, received a Doc.Award. Until recently he has been working as a postdoctoral fellow, continuing in the group of Professor Anton Zeilinger in Vienna.
Dr Mark Thompson being awarded his IUPAP Young Scientist Prize, C17—Laser Physics and Photonics, Applied Aspects at CLEO– Europe/EQEC on 24th June 2015. Also pictured, Professor Luc Berge, Chair of the Quantum Electronics and Optics Division of the European Physical Society and Professor Deb Kane, Chair of IUPAP Commission 17.
Interview with Dr Mark Thompson*
DEB: Welcome Mark! I’m really pleased to be able to chat to you today about your winning of the IUPAP Laser Physics and Photonics Young Scientist’s Prize for applied aspects for 2015. Congratulations!
MARK: Thank you very much.
DEB: And thank you very much for agreeing to answer the questions that we’ve got for you this afternoon. The citation for your prize says “for his contributions to the new and emerging field of quantum photonics, and particularly for his pioneering work in integrated quantum photonic circuits”. Firstly, can you please tell us what the award-winning research is, for someone with a physics degree?
MARK: My research is about harnessing the quantum mechanical properties of light, and particularly to process, encode and transmit information. That really opens up the doors to a whole new range of different, and potentially ground breaking technologies in areas such as ultra-secure communication and new types of computation; for instance, complex quantum simulations and quantum chemistry calculations, or in machine learning. Controlling the quantum properties of photons is not a particularly simple matter. You have to be able to generate single photons, manipulate single photons and detect single photons. However, research into this has been going on since the early 1970s, when people first demonstrated that you could take single photons and put them in superpositions of being in many different places, or you could entangle single photons and control and manipulate the quantum mechanical properties of these photons. So that’s well understood, but what we’re doing now, and particularly what my research is focusing on, is developing more usable and practical technologies where we’re taking the ideas and concepts from quantum physics, and using state of the art photonic engineering approaches and techniques to create what we call quantum microchip circuits. We’re using the same sort of manufacture processes that would be used to fabricate a microprocessor in your computer, except we’re using them to create quantum circuits where we can guide and manipulate single photons on the chip. That’s allowing us to create new applications in quantum communications, and is enabling us to scale-up this technology so that ultimately, in the future, we may be able to make systems large enough to perform quantum computing calculations.
DEB: Best of luck with all of those challenges. MARK: Thank you.
DEB: If I could ask you a follow up question. If you could translate that for somebody who was a bit earlier in their physics education, what would you say?
MARK: Oh, right, that’s always a tricky question. In a sense, it’s creating new technologies for information processing and communications, but instead of using, say for instance in conventional computing, electrons to do the computing, we’re now using photons, single particles of light, to do the computing. By using single photons we can get access to a part of physics, known as quantum physics, that current computing machines don’t use, and that gives us new ways of processing information and potentially incredibly powerful ways to perform computations that are completely beyond the capabilities of our current information processing machines.
DEB: Thank you. Do you have a feel for where your work fits into physics overall?
MARK: Right. It’s grounded in quantum mechanics, which is one of the foundational theories of modern physics, and in a sense we’re exploiting those ideas and concepts from quantum mechanics. So, I really see it as, potentially, a tool with which physics can explore an understanding in greater depth of the world as we know it. So we’re creating machines that harness entanglement, super- position and quantum states on a larger and larger scale. And so this will allow us to probe our understanding of quantum physics in an ever deeper and more meaningful way. It will also allow us to create machines that can perform computations far superior to the sorts of computations that we can do now. The particular areas where this will become significant is, for instance, when you want to fully simulate real physical systems and real quantum systems. We will be able to use these technologies as a tool to ask questions about like...well, where does high T super-conductivity arise from, how do we get to room temperature super-conductivity, can we perform advanced quantum simulations on molecular dynamics? To give you an example of the advantage that a quantum
computing device can give you; if, for instance, you want to perform a simulation of an electron system, and say you’ve got 300 electrons in that system; this might be for instance a simulation of a super-conducting material. The size, or the amount of memory that you would need for your computer to fully simulate 300 electrons is greater than the number of atoms in the universe; so it’s completely beyond what you can do with a conventional computer. However, a quantum computer could perform that sort of calculation with, of order, 300 qubits. So that gives you an idea of the potential power that a quantum computer could have. We would be able to use that machine as a tool to probe various aspects of physics that we would never be able to do otherwise.
DEB: Thank you. You’ve won the IUPAP YSP prize for applied aspects. Can you tell us about the applied nature of your research?
MARK: I guess the applied nature of my research is really about making things. I really enjoy making devices, and laboratory-based work. And so, the applied aspects of my work are really about using state-of-the-art photonic engineering approaches and principles, and bringing that technology to bear onto the area of quantum optics and quantum photonics. So, I work a lot with big semiconductor fabrication foundries; the sort that people like Intel would be using to make microprocessors. We use exactly the same capabilities and facilities to make our quantum photonic chips that are controlling and manipulating single particles of light rather than controlling and manipulating electrons – which is what microprocessors do. My applied aspects are really about developing these new types of quantum circuits. Having them fabricated in commercial fabrication facilities, and then back in the laboratories in Bristol where we do all the testing and characterisation, exploring how they work, and developing all of the capabilities that you would need on a single microchip to scale up this technology.
DEB: Can you tell the listeners a little bit about how you got to be doing what you do now. What was your journey in physics?
MARK: Well, I’ve always been interested in light, ever since a very early age; light and radio waves; I used to build my own radio-transmitters when I was a kid. I had some interesting moments with some pirate radio stations, but that probably shouldn’t be on the record.
Laughter.
MARK: But yeah, I’ve always been interested in light. I did a degree in physics with engineering, and then straight after my degree I went to work in the telecommunications industry, designing and making devices for the world’s first silicon-photonic companies. After working on various components for the telecommunications industry, I decided I wanted to go back and do something a bit more physics- based, so I did a PhD at the University of Cambridge working on quantum dot lasers. I had a fantastic time working with this new type of laser, and then towards the end of my time there, I decided I wanted to move into a new area that used both my interest in physics and my interest in engineering. This area of integrated quantum optics was the ideal place, there was a lot of interesting physics, but also some really hard engineering challenges to be overcome to have a significant impact. So that’s why I’ve landed where I have, because I have this balance between physics and engineering. I have a passion for physics and a passion for making things.
DEB: I think you’ve answered my question which was what motivates you to do research at a high level, so we’ll carry on.
Laughter.
DEB: What are you working on now, and how do you go about deciding what you should work on?
MARK: At the moment I’m continuing with the development of the waveguide integrated quantum circuits. Effectively, developing a technology platform that will allow us to propel this technology forward in terms of realising ultimately a quantum computer, and before that realising devices for quantum simulations and quantum communications. What this requires is development all of the basic components; so just like your classical computer has transistors, capacitors, resistors and ways of manipulating electrons, we need all of those sorts of components within a microchip circuit, but able to control and manipulate photons. We need photon sources, ways of switching and moving these photons around, we need quantum interference, and detection of these single photons. And so what
I’m developing is the entire technology platform to get all of these components integrated onto a silicon chip. Then we’ll start to scale up, but at the moment we have devices with about 100 components on them. Maybe next year we’ll have devices with 1000 components on them, and then in a way we’ll just keep scaling that up, while maintaining the quantum coherence of the system.
DEB: So that sounds like that’s probably going to keep you going for most of your lifetime, so you’re not really thinking about what else you need to do.
MARK: No, this is definitely a long-term career ambition.
DEB: Very good. What does winning the prize at this stage of your career mean for you?
MARK: It’s really nice to be recognised; that’s absolutely true, it’s nice to be recognised for the work that you’re doing. You get recognition within your own institute and you get recognised by your peers. And so, it helps my career in terms of my own visibility, which is important at this stage of my career.
DEB: IUPAP, the International Union for Pure and Applied Physics, what role do you think an overarching union of physics commissions should play for physics in the world?
MARK: I think, really, looking at how physics, physicists and the problem-solving abilities of physicists can be used to solve some of the major challenges facing society today, and I think looking at how physicists can be used to solve some of the major problems in climate, in energy, and communications.
DEB: Are there any questions I haven’t asked you that you would have liked to have been asked? This is your opportunity to tell our listeners something you really want them to know about your work, physics, what matters to you.
MARK: Well the question that I most often get asked is “when will we have a quantum computer?” Or “how long would it take to make a quantum computer?” And that’s always a really difficult question to answer. But I do generally think that within the next 10 years we’ll have large scale computing machines doing advanced simulations of some sort or another. So I think it’s actually a lot closer than a lot of people realise.
DEB: thank you very much Mark, and once again, congratulations on your Young Scientist prize from the Laser Physics and Photonics Commission and I wish you success in your future career.
MARK: Thank you very much.
*This transcript of the recorded interview has had minor editing for readability.
Interview with Dr Robert Fickler*
DEB: Thank you Robert! I am joined by Dr. Robert Fickler who has just been awarded the IUPAP Laser Physics and Photonics Young Scientist’s prize for 2015 for Fundamental Aspects. The citation for Robert’s prize was “for his ground-breaking contributions to the entanglement of complex structures of photons, which have opened up new avenues for quantum communications.” Robert, Congratulations! Firstly, can you please explain your award-winning research to someone with a physics degree, where it sits in laser physics and photonics overall, and why it matters at this time.
ROBERT: Okay. Thanks, first of all, and yeah the research I did was as you mentioned the entanglement of structures of light. So first of all, it’s about entanglement, it’s about the foundations of physics and entanglement is one key feature of quantum physics. We took advantage of the spatial structure of light, and we tried to increase its complexity and thereby gain new insights, or testing the limits, even, of quantum physics. So a few examples here are to certain spatial structures of light there’s an orbital angular momentum degree, an orbital angular momentum connected, and there in principal it can be arbitrarily large, for a single photon, and even for an entangled photons. And this was one question we asked ourselves; “okay, what is…at least for the moment…the technical limit? How high can we go? And if there is a foundational limit, can we even reach that?” We are, I guess, far away from that if there is one at all, but this was one question. Another one was whether the spatial modes can be used as a laboratory realisation of high-dimensional Hilbert space. So, what does it mean for
quantum information? Normally, everything is in qubits, but one could actually think of qutrits, ququarts, so not just 2 level systems but 3, 4 level systems; also infinitely high-dimensional systems. It’s known that they have advantages when it comes to certain quantum particles. There, we try to find out how much information we can put in to one photon or in an entanglement. We did some research mainly trying to increase the complexity of either the theoretical state or even just the spatial structure. We tried to find out new properties; if there are new properties; if the theory is always right?, or just to see them actually in the lab we could try and get a better understanding of what was happening. This especially applies to quantum physics and quantum optics; the singular particles of light.
DEB: So that’s quite a lot of physics. If you were to try to translate that to something that would resonate with someone a bit earlier in their physics education; have a go at doing that translation.
ROBERT: So I think I should first explain a little bit about entanglement. So, as I mentioned earlier, it is a key feature of quantum physics. So if you have two systems; two particles for example; at least two particles, they can be entangled. This means that they show strongly correlated features; they have some sort of connection, or it’s like they know about each other. It’s hard to explain. Correlations are known from classical physics as well, but quantum correlations are even stronger than classical physics can explain. So they can be separated by a big distance and still behave exactly the same; although, we can make sure that we they did not find an agreement before our measurements are done. Why we are interested in this is also a very foundational question as well. Well, with these experiments one can ask questions about how the world is, or how the properties are; if we can actually describe properties to these without measuring them or not; so it’s a very philosophical discussion of course. This is what we investigate in the labs, and we try to push the limits. In the everyday world, we don’t see these quantum correlations, so we ask ourselves why this is the case. Is it just happening for little systems or can we actually use some of these properties and extend them, or increase them so much, that we should be able to see them in the classical world and then see some correlations there? So this then applies to areas such as macroscopic entanglement and whether this is observable or not.
DEB: Well I was going to ask you what’s fundamental about your research but I think that you’ve already answered that question and established that your research is fundamental in nature. So we might just move onto the next questions. May I ask what your physics story is? How did you come to be doing this award-winning research?
ROBERT: I guess I was always interested in physics so at one point I started to study physics. I was actually kind of lucky because at the university I was studying at, there was a small philosophy department as well and they promoted it because they wanted to have people study philosophy there as well. Because of this I heard about it and I went to some of the lectures in philosophy, and I became very attracted to philosophy as well. Especially then, because of my physics studies, the interplay between the two; or the overlap between these two fields was very compelling to me. There I found out that quantum physics especially has a big overlap and a big discussion although the theory, or the mathematical framework has been known since the 1930s or so, but the interpretation of this mathematical apparatus that we have is still highly debated. There is still a big discussion going on and this attracted my attention. This is why I went for this area in my PhD with Professor Zeilinger in Vienna, because he is interested as well in the foundational questions, the philosophical questions, and is still doing experiments. I am very interested in the philosophical questions, but I also love to do experiments. So I did a degree in physics, and then one in philosophy. This avenue was then one that was very attractive to me and I followed this, and I was lucky to get an opportunity to work with the renowned Professor Zeilingler in this research. We sometimes do what we call metaphysical experiments, which is kind of a contradictory idea. However, this is what I think is the most interesting idea; at least for me it’s one of the most interesting aspects of experimental physics; because it is so closely connected to philosophical questions.
DEB: I will follow up on that in that it’s obviously quite competitive to become a PhD student in Professor Zeilinger’s group. So was it a lucky outcome that a joint philosophy/physics background was advantageous in that regard?
ROBERT: I guess it helped. (Laughter). But you would also have to ask him about that. Apparently I
didn’t do that many things wrong because I was able to work there, but I’m not certain if that gave me a distinct advantage.
DEB: But it’s certainly part of your motivation. So in terms of your motivation for doing what you do, you’ve given us a good sense of that already, is there anything you would like to add to that in terms of motivation?
ROBERT: I guess I think physics, or at least part of it, should not try to only follow avenues to produce new applications or to make existing technologies better; this is obviously very important, but blue sky research is also really important, and it’s my field so this is definitely the most interesting thing for me. The other parts of physics research are important as well, but I think it is always nice if one does experiments where they are not directly working on applications. Some people challenge the relevance of foundational research; they believe it does not help society, they are sceptical about providing funding for this kind of research. However, in quantum optics, even though it started as a completely foundational field, one knows already that there’s new technologies on the verge of becoming available to the public. And you can show the people of society that there are really useful things coming out of foundational research, even though it usually begins out of pure curiosity.
DEB: Research overall is a very small fraction of human activity, but within that we do want to see a very broad range of things explored, because we don’t know what we’re going to need in 10, 20, 30 years’ time.
ROBERT: Exactly. I even realised in this conference that when you see how many people have their job because of the laser, even though at the start the laser was a solution with no problem. So, one could almost say it was useless, and yet now look at the significance it has.
DEB: Absolutely. So, you’ve just recently made a move from Vienna to Ottawa in Canada, so my next question which is about what you’re working on now and how you go about deciding what you should work on; clearly you’ve just been putting quite a lot of thought into that step, so give us an insight into how you go about making those decisions.
ROBERT: So, I hope that whatever is interesting to me I will be able to follow in the research, without having to make big justifications the research will have applications coming out of it. So I hope I can follow that. Of course with Professor Bob Boyd I can do it as well. To be more precise, I will continue to work on complex structures, and use modern technology which has evolved so much that things are more complex, we’ll add more complexity and control the quantum state perfectly. So, we’re working on that,. I haven’t been involved so far because I’ve just moved there, but I hope I can work as well on extending similar methods to not just photons but to electrons. Some people have started exploring that already and I think it’s highly interesting, because then you have mass particles and charge particles, which adds another complexity to the system. Another motivation for me was the group; the group in Ottawa is very diverse, and since my background so far is mainly quantum information and foundations. I think because they produce photonic crystals and do some plasmonics, so I can learn a lot there, and maybe even combine some other fields with my knowledge to develop new areas of research that are hopefully interesting and fun physics.
DEB: Well I wish you all the best in your new position. So, I’ll ask you now: what does the prize mean to you at this stage in your career?
ROBERT: Well, first I will say that it’s a big honour. Being awarded by such a huge, global organisation such as IUPAP is truly humbling, especially when you consider the long history of IUPAP. As well, I guess it helps you become recognised in your field, in your specific field, and even to a broader audience; the whole optics community, which helps for doing more interesting experiments because you can start collaborations. It also helps with the funding, as you have to get funding, and I hope this will help with that as well.
DEB: I hope so too. So regarding I.UPAP, the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics, what role do you think an overarching union of physics commissions should play for physics in the world?
ROBERT: Well, I like the explanation you gave today, saying that it’s kind of like the U.N. of physics. I think this is a nice way of phrasing it; I think it should bring the global community, and physics
research in general is very global, together to share ideas, to collaborate, and thereby develop new areas of research that are hopefully interesting and fun physics.
DEB: I hope so too. So regarding I.UPAP, the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics, what role do you think an overarching union of physics commissions should play for physics in the world?
ROBERT: Well, I like the explanation you gave today, saying that it’s kind of like the U.N. of physics. I think this is a nice way of phrasing it; I think it should bring the global community, and physics research in general is very global, together to share ideas, to collaborate, and thereby develop new ideas; helping physics in general to tackle new problems velop new ideas; helping physics in general to tackle new problems of physics. I think because of technology, and this huge development in technologies over the last 20 years, I guess physics is developing incredibly; all different fields.
DEB: Absolutely. It’s been very interesting and enjoyable to learn about insights into your research and why you do it. Thank you very much indeed for giving your time to this interview, and I wish you every success in your future career.
ROBERT: Thank you very much.
*This transcript of the recorded interview has had minor editing for readability.
Dr Robert Fickler being awarded his IUPAP Young Scientist Prize, C17—Laser Physics and Photonics, Fundamental Aspects. At CLEO– Europe/EQEC on 24th June 2015. Also pictured, Professor Luc Berge, Chair of the Quantum Electronics and Optics Division of the European Physical Society and Professor Deb Kane, Chair of IUPAP Commission 17.
Acknowledgement
IUPAP gratefully acknowledges the Quantum Electronics and Optics Division of the EPS and the European Physical Society for hosting the IUPAP C17 Young Scientist Prize Awards ceremony at CLEO-Europe/EQEC 2015.