Physics congratulates Rainer Blatt on his 70th – University of Innsbruck
Last week, the Institute for Experimental Physics and the Physics research focus held a one-day symposium in honor of the quantum physicist Rainer Blatt, who celebrated his 70th birthday on September 8th. Many of his companions and students came to Innsbruck for the occasion.
Under the title “25 years of trapped ions in Innsbruck”, physicists from all over the world came together on Thursday to discuss the quantum computer pioneer Rainer Blatt to celebrate. Blatt was appointed to the University of Innsbruck in 1995 and, together with his team in Innsbruck, developed and researched the building blocks of a quantum computer based on ion trap technology. His doctoral supervisor Günter Werth, professor emeritus at the University of Mainz and student of Nobel Prize winner Wolfgang Paul, the inventor of the Paul trap, gave the lecture in honor of Rainer Blatt. Subsequently, sheets of former assistants Piet Schmidt, Hartmut Häffner, Jürgen Eschner, Ferdinand Schmidt-Kaler and Christian Roos presented in the Kaiser-Leopold-Saal. Individual aspects of experimental physics with trapped ions. Blatt’s students are numerous and many are now professors at universities abroad. The celebrations took place in the evening in a cozy setting in the Bierstindl inn. On Friday, the international guests had the opportunity to find out about current developments in quantum physics in Innsbruck during lab tours.
Rainer Blatt: Pioneer of the quantum computer
Rainer Blatt was born on September 8, 1952 in Idar-Oberstein, Germany. He has performed pioneering experiments in the fields of precision spectroscopy, quantum metrology and quantum information. Blatt and his team were the first to transfer the quantum information from one atom to another in a fully controlled manner (“teleportation”). He is also responsible for the generation of the first “quantum byte”. Meanwhile, his team routinely works with quantum computers with 20 to 50 quantum bits, performs quantum simulations and demonstrates the essential steps for successful error correction in quantum computers. For his achievements, Rainer Blatt has received awards including the Stern-Gerlach Medal, the Micius Prize and an honorary doctorate from the University of Madrid. He is a member of several scientific academies, i.e. the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences of the USA.