Damian is a recent theoretical physics graduate. In September he will start his PhD with Dr Anna Posazhennikova at Royal Holloway University of London to work on nonequilibrium dynamics of bosons in optical lattices. The aim is to study the role played by incoherent quasi-particles excited due to nonequilibrium and to study the role of disorder in dynamics, as well as possible thermalisation of superfluid optical lattices. He won a Nature Reviews Physics poster prize at the Condensed Matter Physics in the City conference in London.

Can you briefly explain the results for which you got the award?

The poster was based on work on analysing quantum phase transitions in a system of optical lattice bosons coupled to an array of atomic quantum dots. The hybrid system parallels the Bose-Hubbard model with a single difference of an additional assisted tunnelling via coupling to atomic quantum dots. Using mean field methods we show that the bosonic subsystem still undergoes a Mott-superfluid quantum phase transition. However, unlike in the Bose-Hubbard model transition, the transition boundary can be manipulated.

What do you hope will be the impact of your research?

I do not know enough about the field to say, but I hope it at least gives some thoughts to any of its readers.

What made you want to be a physicist in the first place?

I haven’t fully decided on it yet. At first, I liked doing maths and physics, I wondered what doing physics would lead to. Sometime throughout my A-levels, I decided to pursue physics. Getting better at physics and learning more of it has made it pretty fun and absorbed me more and more into it.

If you weren’t a physicist, what would you like to be (and why)?

Mathematician or doing some work involving programming, I like doing both of them.

Which is the development that you would really like to see in the next 10 years?

Different style of physics education. Physics books are hard to read through, the concepts they present are sometimes hard to understand with just what is written in them and different books cover things in different detail. It would be nice to have lectures online or podcast discussions on these books. I would like to see a single book/online course series which goes into varying depth on all physics topics (dependent on if someone is just curious or studying the topic seriously), with accompanying problems, discussions, and projects to push the understanding of students. Also, this series would need to be entirely self-sufficient.

What Sci-Fi gadget or technology would you most like to have / see come true (and why)?

A new electric propulsion engine, one that can be used to leave the surface of Earth: it might make things cheap enough to grab a ticket for a spaceflight around the Earth.

Alexander is a PhD student at the Center for Quantum Devices at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, and works on realizing topological states of matter in hybrid two-dimensional superconductor-semiconductor heterostructures. His primary research interest is observing Majorana zero modes in hybrid quantum dot geometries (Majorana islands). He won a Nature Reviews Physics poster prize at the Quantum Designer Physics conference in San Sebastian last June.

Can you briefly explain the results for which you got the award? 

The results that led to my award are based on observing phase coherent single-electron transport in a hybrid quantum dot interferometer in the presence of a discrete zero energy mode. This is of interest because Majorana zero modes are expected to allow for coherent single-electron transport due to their non-local properties.

What do you hope will be the impact of your research?

Many of the recent topological quantum bit (qubit) proposals rely on interferometric measurements as a form of read-out of the quantum state. Our results indicate that indeed this is possible. Furthermore, it is necessary that hybrid quantum dots preserve phase coherence for them to act as coherent links between qubits, which we have also demonstrated. I believe our research will aid in the design of future topological qubits based on Majorana islands.

What made you want to be a physicist in the first place?

Physics has always appealed to me because it not only has the ability to give detailed descriptions of our nature but also asks many fundamental questions yet to be answered.

If you weren’t a physicist, what would you like to be (and why)?

It is a difficult question to ask what could replace physics in my life. I would find it interesting to research the history of science, or to report on new scientific discoveries.

Which is the development that you would really like to see in the next 10 years?

I am eager to see the development of an inexpensive clean energy source that would allow for a global transition away from fossil fuels.

What Sci-Fi gadget or technology would you most like to have / see come true (and why)?

The ability to travel at the speed of light so we could discover many new wonders about our universe.

Manisha is a postdoc in the group of Prof. Jelena Klinovaja and Prof. Daniel Loss at the University of Basel, Switzerland. She is a physicist by training and her research interest lies in understanding the topological aspects of different quantum systems. She won a Nature Reviews Physics poster prize at the Quantum Designer Physics conference in San Sebastian last June.

Can you briefly explain the results for which you got the award? 

The award was based on a study of double Rashba nanowires coupled to an s-wave superconductor, which has been recently proposed as a versatile platform to generate Kramers pairs of Majorana bound states in the absence of magnetic field. We analyze the effects of electron-electron interactions and disorder on the system and find that the interactions drive the system into the topological phase. We further consider an external magnetic field along the nanowires and demonstrate that the setup exhibits a new previously overlooked Majorana phase that emerges at low magnetic field.

What do you hope will be the impact of your research?

The field of topological quantum computation with Majorana bound states (MBSs) has grown immensely in the past decade. We propose a new setup for the appearance of MBSs, where MBSs exhibit sufficiently short localization lengths, which makes them ideal candidates for future braiding experiments.

What made you want to be a physicist in the first place?

Ever since my school and college days, I enjoyed studying and understanding the universal laws of nature that govern things around us. Also I had an incredible physics teacher during my high school who inspired me towards the amazing science which happen to be Physics !!

If you weren’t a physicist, what would you like to be (and why)?

I also had interest in medicine, perhaps I would have been a medical professional (A REAL DOCTOR).

Which is the development that you would really like to see in the next 10 years?

A topological quantum computer or a room-temperature superconductor .

What’s your favourite (quasi-)particle?

Based on my area of research interest , two are my favourites: Bogoliubov quasiparticles and composite fermions.

William was awarded a Nature Reviews Physics poster prize at ICAP 2018.

Please introduce yourself 

I am a 3^rd year PhD student at Durham University, UK, I collaborate with the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light, Germany, and I work with atoms. A single atom is cool because it is a ‘quantum’ object and studying it can teach us about fundamental physics. A single atom is also cool because it can interact with a single photon. Systems built of single atoms communicating via single photons offer some interesting and mysterious uses; one Holy Grail of this community being a universal quantum computer. The challenge currently is how do we acquire a single atom? And how can we manipulate it? This is what my experiment focusses on (pun intended). I use thermal vapours of rubidium confined within nanometre-scale glass cavities (e.g. a fancy double-glazed window). This offers a novel and relatively simple method to approach the limit of having a single atom, on demand.

1.  Can you briefly explain the results for which you got the award?

My award was mainly for the creation and characterization of the ‘nanocells’ that we make. We are able to confine atomic vapour in structures ~500 nm in size. As was mentioned, it is really the novel approach that we are taking and the methodology itself that is the most interesting to the atomic physics community. To give some context: A typical cold-atom experiment might use ~200 BNC connectors to control the experiment, I currently use just 6. This is the beauty and ‘simplicity’ of thermal vapour experiments.

2.  What do you hope will be the impact of your research?

This depends on scale. Within our field we hope to produce a robust platform for single atom – single photon experiments. In research physics as a whole I hope to prove that one can ‘dare to dream’ if that isn’t too cliché. That there may exist some radically different approaches to achieving a goal, and that we can learn a lot by looking at methods used by other fields. For example, my microscopy setup is also used commonly in bio-physics experiments. In a wider context, it is possible that the understanding of fundamental physics can later lead to the exploitation and harnessing of these effects. One parallel could be to look at Faraday. Faraday was a researcher and in his lab he experimented with the effects of electromagnetism (later formalised by Maxwell). He was studying fundamental physics, he was not an inventor. Yet, 150 years later we have electric motors, lights, kettles, and the national grid. All things made possible by first understanding nature, and then harnessing these effects.

3.  What made you want to be a physicist in the first place?

To be honest not much. We choose our GCSEs, A-levels and degree at quite a young age. Certainly without the experience of knowing different fields in depth. I was good at science and I enjoyed being able to get satisfying answers on how things worked, and so I pursued it. Moreover, I cannot say if I will always be in the field and so, despite the fact that I am a PhD student in physics, I would argue that I never really ‘chose’ to be a physicist. I had no particular goal in mind, I simply chose the local most interesting decision at the time, and this path has lead me to where I am now. Perhaps that is how a passion manifests itself. In short: there was no single event of inspiration, but instead an ongoing process of learning and following the course of making rather short-term decisions that has steered me to where I am now.

4.   If you weren’t a physicist, what would you like to be (and why)?

I think I would try to be a professional athlete. Another great joy in my life is sport, and I do as much as I can currently. I would be curious to see how far I could get if I were to give it my full attention.

5.   Which is the development that you would really like to see in the next 10 years?

In the past century or so we have seen a continuous improvement in the understanding of the natural world that has come about by major international collaboration. Gone are the days where a single person can witness a natural phenomenon by candle light (well you still can, but it is nothing new). Today the world is more connected, and we study physics with greater precision and reliability than ever before. Experiments often take years of setup, controlled lab environments, and this all takes funding and the sharing of expertise. Science is also more accessible too with social revolution driving equality and allowing all people to pursue a career in science. I would simply like to see this continue. No one can predict the events of the future, and aiming for what you cannot see is impossible. However, what we can do is build the most productive and healthy work environment that we can, and to allow people and ideas to flourish.

6.    What is your non-scientifically accurate guilty pleasure (could be film/series/book)?

Guilty pleasure? Definitely farming simulator. I’d say it’s non-scientifically accurate by the extraordinary plant yields that seem to defy any conservation law. The physics engine is quite primitive too.

Jeanne is a first year PhD student in the chair of condensed matter theory lead by Professor Frédéric Mila at École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, in Switzerland. The general aim of the group is to explore new phases of matter induced by strong correlations in electronic systems, which is done by investigating analytically and numerically the role of frustration or competing interactions in lattice models of low-dimensional quantum magnetism. She is the recipient of one of the poster prizes sponsored by Nature Reviews Physics at the Machine Learning for Quantum Many-body Physics workshop that happen last June in Dresden.

1.    Can you briefly explain the results for which you got the award?

I have been mainly focusing on the Ising model with antiferromagnetic further-neighbour couplings on the kagomé lattice. I am doing Monte Carlo simulations to try and understand how the physics of this model changes depending on the range of the interactions taken into account. It was a nice surprise to get an award for my poster, given that the main focus of the conference was Machine Learning for quantum many-body physics, and I have not been doing machine learning so far.

2.    What do you hope will be the impact of your research?

I am looking at a very specific problem, so I think the dream would be that new, more general questions would arise from studying this system.

3.    What made you want to be a physicist in the first place?

For me, it is a good balance between trying to understand our surroundings, trying to solve interesting and challenging problems, and meeting dedicated people whom I have a lot to learn from.

4.    If you weren’t a physicist, what would you like to be (and why)?

I think, as long as I would be trying to solve some problems and would feel useful in some way, I would be happy.

5.    What would be your physics superpower?

Asking the right question right away.

6.    What is your non-scientifically accurate guilty pleasure?

Maybe I don’t feel guilty enough about it, but I spend a lot of time playing and listening to music.