Leo Kouwenhoven | |
---|---|
![]() Leo Kouwenhoven in 2016 | |
Born | |
Nationality | Dutch |
Alma mater | TU Delft |
Awards | Spinoza Prize |
Website | qutech |
Leo Kouwenhoven (born 10 December 1963) is a Dutch physicist known for his research on quantum computing.
Kouwenhoven grew up in Pijnacker, a village near Delft, where his parents ran a farm. After losing the admission lottery for veterinary medicine he decided to study physics at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft). [1]
In 1992 he received his PhD cum laude at TU Delft; his promoter was Hans Mooij . In 1999 he became a professor at TU Delft. [1] In 2007 he received the Spinoza Prize, the highest Dutch academic award. In April 2012 his TU Delft research group presented experimental results that provided potential "signatures" of Majorana fermion quasiparticles. [2] [3] [4] These Majorana quasiparticles would be very stable, and therefore suitable for building a quantum computer. [5]
In 2018 his research group claimed to have proved the definitive existence of Majorana particles in a Nature publication. [6] However, the results could not be reproduced by other scientists, and the article had to be retracted in 2021 due to "insufficient scientific rigour". [7] [8] [9] [10] The researchers had excluded data points that contradicted their claims, with the complete data not supporting their conclusions. [11]
Kouwenhoven has six sisters and is married to Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam professor Marleen Huysman. [1]
Delft is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland, Netherlands. It is located between Rotterdam, to the southeast, and The Hague, to the northwest. Together with them, it is a part of both the Rotterdam–The Hague metropolitan area and the Randstad.
In particle physics, a fermion is a particle that follows Fermi–Dirac statistics. Fermions have a half-odd-integer spin and obey the Pauli exclusion principle. These particles include all quarks and leptons and all composite particles made of an odd number of these, such as all baryons and many atoms and nuclei. Fermions differ from bosons, which obey Bose–Einstein statistics.
The Delft University of Technology is the oldest and largest Dutch public technical university, located in Delft, Netherlands. As of 2022, it is ranked by QS World University Rankings among the top 10 Engineering and Technology universities in the world. In 2023, it was ranked 2nd in the world in civil engineering, 3rd in the world in mechanical and aerospace engineering, and 3rd in the world in architecture.
In physics, an anyon is a type of quasiparticle so far observed only in two-dimensional systems. In three-dimensional systems, only two kinds of elementary particles are seen: fermions and bosons. Anyons have statistical properties intermediate between fermions and bosons. In general, the operation of exchanging two identical particles, although it may cause a global phase shift, cannot affect observables. Anyons are generally classified as abelian or non-abelian. Abelian anyons, detected by two experiments in 2020, play a major role in the fractional quantum Hall effect.
Robertus Henricus "Robbert" Dijkgraaf FRSE is a Dutch theoretical physicist, mathematician and string theorist, and the current Minister of Education, Culture and Science in the Netherlands. From July 2012 until his inauguration as minister in January 2022, he had been the director and Leon Levy professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, and a tenured professor at the University of Amsterdam.
In condensed matter physics, a quasiparticle is a concept used to describe a collective behavior of a group of particles that can be treated as if they were a single particle. Formally, quasiparticles and collective excitations are closely related phenomena that arise when a microscopically complicated system such as a solid behaves as if it contained different weakly interacting particles in vacuum.
The fractional quantum Hall effect (FQHE) is a physical phenomenon in which the Hall conductance of 2-dimensional (2D) electrons shows precisely quantized plateaus at fractional values of , where e is the electron charge and h is the Planck constant. It is a property of a collective state in which electrons bind magnetic flux lines to make new quasiparticles, and excitations have a fractional elementary charge and possibly also fractional statistics. The 1998 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Robert Laughlin, Horst Störmer, and Daniel Tsui "for their discovery of a new form of quantum fluid with fractionally charged excitations" The microscopic origin of the FQHE is a major research topic in condensed matter physics.
A Majorana fermion, also referred to as a Majorana particle, is a fermion that is its own antiparticle. They were hypothesised by Ettore Majorana in 1937. The term is sometimes used in opposition to a Dirac fermion, which describes fermions that are not their own antiparticles.
Sankar Das Sarma is an India-born American theoretical condensed matter physicist. He has been a member of the department of physics at University of Maryland, College Park since 1980.
Spinons are one of three quasiparticles, along with holons and orbitons, that electrons in solids are able to split into during the process of spin–charge separation, when extremely tightly confined at temperatures close to absolute zero. The electron can always be theoretically considered as a bound state of the three, with the spinon carrying the spin of the electron, the orbiton carrying the orbital location and the holon carrying the charge, but in certain conditions they can behave as independent quasiparticles.
Michiel Riedijk is a Dutch architect and professor at the Technical University Delft. He is co-founder of the architecture office Neutelings Riedijk Architects in Rotterdam, Netherlands.
Stephanie Dorothea Christine Wehner is a German physicist and computer scientist.
In condensed matter physics, quantum oscillations describes a series of related experimental techniques used to map the Fermi surface of a metal in the presence of a strong magnetic field. These techniques are based on the principle of Landau quantization of Fermions moving in a magnetic field. For a gas of free fermions in a strong magnetic field, the energy levels are quantized into bands, called the Landau levels, whose separation is proportional to the strength of the magnetic field. In a quantum oscillation experiment, the external magnetic field is varied, which causes the Landau levels to pass over the Fermi surface, which in turn results in oscillations of the electronic density of states at the Fermi level; this produces oscillations in the many material properties which depend on this, including resistance, Hall resistance, and magnetic susceptibility. Observation of quantum oscillations in a material is considered a signature of Fermi liquid behaviour.
Jan in 't Veld was a Dutch aerospace engineer and professor of industrial organization at the Mechanical Engineering Department of the Technical University of Delft. In the Netherlands he was one of the pioneers of the application of systems theory in business administration and management.
Claudia Felser is a German solid state chemist and materials scientist. She is currently a director of the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids. Felser was elected as a member into the National Academy of Engineering in 2020 for the prediction and discovery of engineered quantum materials ranging from Heusler compounds to topological insulators.
Barbara M. Terhal is a theoretical physicist working in quantum information and quantum computing. She is a professor in the Delft Institute of Applied Mathematics at TU Delft, as well as leading the Terhal Group at QuTech, the Dutch institute for quantum computing and quantum internet, founded by TU Delft and the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO). Her research concerns many areas in quantum information theory, including entanglement detection, quantum error correction, fault-tolerant quantum computing and quantum memories.
Henk Joseph Maria (Henk) Lombaers was a Dutch mathematician, Professor at Delft University of Technology and a pioneer in the field of operations research in the Netherlands.
Pierre Charles-André Malotaux was a Dutch organizational theorist, business consultant, and Professor of Business Administration at the Delft University of Technology. His is known with Jan in 't Veld for developing a specific systems approach to organizational problems, called the Delft Systems Approach.
Ronald Hanson is a Dutch experimental physicist. He is best known for his work on the foundations and applications of quantum entanglement. He is Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Professor at the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience at Delft University of Technology and scientific director of QuTech. the Dutch Quantum Institute for quantum computing and quantum internet, founded by Delft University of Technology and the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Research.
Mordehai "Moty" Heiblum is an Israeli electrical engineer and condensed matter physicist, known for his research in mesoscopic physics.