News

From 6 to 8 October, the SuperMeQ consortium held its fourth meeting in Munich, hosted by the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. Over the course of the meeting, the partners had the opportunity to discuss their recent results, exchange new ideas, and strengthen collaborations. The meeting was also the occasion to prepare for the 2nd interim reporting period and review meeting taking place later in the fall.   

Project updates were shared by consortium members and enriched by an inspiring talk from Prof John Davis (Zero Point Cryogenics and University of Alberta, Canada) as well as a visit to the laboratories at the Walther-Meißner-Institute.

It is planed that the consortium will meet again in person in September 2026 in Sweden for a concluding workshop of the SuperMeQ project. 

The International Conference on Micromechanics 2025, hosted in Obergurgl, Austria, on 2-7 February explored the latest breakthroughs in quantum-micromechanical systems, with a special focus on levitated and circuit quantum electrodynamical systems.

Organized by the EU funded project SuperMeQ and in particular by Gerhard Kirchmair (IQOQI Innsbruck), Witlef Wieczorek (Chalmers University), Michael Trupke and Markus Aspelmeyer (IQOQI Vienna), Hans Huebl (Walther Meißner Institute Munich), Anja Metelmann (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology), and Carles Navau (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) – the event gathered around 70 attendees for a week of inspiring scientific discussions and knowledge exchange.

The conference featured 19 invited talks, 6 contributed talks, presentations from each SuperMeQ node and two poster sessions.  

Held in the stunning surroundings of Obergurgl, the event offered more than just insightful talks – it provided a chance for attendees to connect and collaborate in an inspiring environment.

The programme of the conference is available here.

The 3rd SuperMeQ consortium meeting took place on 27-29 November 2024 in Vienna.

The SuperMeQ partners met at the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information for three days filled with insightful discussions, idea exchanges, and plenty of opportunities to reconnect and collaborate. The updates from the project’s partners were complemented by inspiring presentations from guest speakers Salambô Dago (University of Vienna), Daniel Platz (TU Wien), Nicolas Díaz Naufal (Freie Universität Berlin) and Markus Arndt (University of Vienna).

The partners will meet again in February at the International Conference on Micromechanics while the next project’s meeting will take place in Munich on 6-8 October 2025.

The SuperMeQ project is pleased to announce the International Conference on Micromechanics 2025, taking place in Obergurgl (Austria) on February 2-7, 2025.

The conference is organized by Gerhard Kirchmair (IQOQI Innsbruck), Witlef Wieczorek (Chalmers University), Michael Trupke and Markus Aspelmeyer (University of Vienna), Hans Huebl (Walther Meißner Institute Munich), Anja Metelmann (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology) and Carles Navau (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona).

The conference focuses on the recent progress in the field of quantum-micromechanics with a special focus on levitated systems and circuit QED implementations. Levitated systems allow for extremely high mechanical Q factors while circuit QED systems provide large coupling strength between the mechanics and the resonator. Combining both of these approaches open the door towards controlling the quantum state of the mechanical system.

More information, the conference program and registration are available here: https://www.uibk.ac.at/en/congress/micromechanics/

SuperMeQ was participating in the recent Gordon Research Conference on Mechanical Systems in the Quantum Regime that was held March 3 – 8, 2024 in Ventura, US. We had a lot of discussions at the posters presenting our work on levitating superconducting microparticles and coupling clamped mechanical systems to superconducting circuits. Inspiring!

Enjoy reading today’s news article in PhysicsWorld.

Magnetic trap keeps a superconducting microsphere levitated and stable

You may have heard of transistors, capacitors and coils as components of a classic computer. But how do you turn it into a quantum computer? What does all this have to do with superconductors? What can quantum computers actually do better than a classic computer and why are Google, IBM and Intel interested in it?

At the Pint of Science Festival in Innsbruck on 22-24 May 2023, Gerhard Kirchmair (OAEW.V) explains how to elicit quantum phenomena from electrical circuits with the help of superconductors and how to use them to build a quantum computer that can do “some things” better than a classical computer. The research conducted in SuperMeQ is used as a practical reference.

SuperMeQ presented results on its levitation platform at the APS March meeting in Las Vegas: Towards quantum magnetomechanics – chip-based magnetic levitation of a superconducting microsphere at session B66: DAMOP: Hybrid Quantum Systems I.