ERC Advanced Grant
Award year: 2010
Category: Scholarship / Grant
Type: ERC Advanced Grant
Awarding organization: Europäischer Forschungsrat (ERC)
Vahid Sandoghar’s goal is to detect single ions in one crystal with the help of light. It’s already possible to detect and produce images of atoms, molecules or semiconductor quantum dots. Attempts to do the same with ions in crystals have not been successful until now because the particles only emit small amounts of light. Ions in solid state structures are useful for a series of technical applications. Researchers are hoping to gain new insights into the properties of these individual particles by gaining access to them. In addition, ions could be the key to a new system for quantum optical measurements – the basis for quantum information processing. Vahid Sandoghdar received the ERC Grant at ETH Zürich.