12 June 2024

Julian Bösl and Jan Kochanowski win the MCQST 2023 Master’s Awards

The MCQST Master's Award recognizes two exceptional Master's theses from the MCQST community, each year. This prestigious prize serves to acknowledge and celebrate outstanding research projects undertaken by talented Master's students, with the intention of inspiring and motivating the awardees to pursue successful careers in the field of science.

From the submitted theses, the jury selected and awarded two outstanding works in 2023: "Excitations in higher moment conserving systems" by Julian Bösl and "Static and dynamic properties of quantum spin systems at non-zero T" by Jan Kochanowski. Alongside the recognition of their excellent contribution to the MCQST scientific community, the award consist of €1000 each, generously donated by Zurich Instruments.

The award ceremony took place during the Munich Conference on Quantum Science and Technology 2024 in Sonthofen on Friday, 17 May, where the Master's Award was celebrated for the second time.

Julian Bösl

Excitations in higher moment conserving systems

TUM & LMU | Supervisor: Prof. Michael Knap

The presence of additional kinematic constraints in quantum many-body systems leads to exotic novel physics. In his thesis, Julian investigated the dynamics of excitations in a particularly simple bosonic model featuring conservation of the total center of mass. One illustrative example is the case of two doped particles, the correlated mobility of which depends strongly on the ground state. This provides a powerful dynamical signature of the underlying quantum phase of matter. The group further developed a proposal for an adiabatic preparation scheme of these states in tilted optical lattices, which suggests that the observation of fractonic low-energy physics of bosons is already within reach on current platforms.

"I feel very honoured to have been selected for the MCQST Master's Award. On the one-year journey which led to this thesis, I have learned so much not only about physics, but about doing physics as well, and I am incredibly grateful to have been accompanied by supportive and motivating scientists in our research group and the larger community. What amazes me the most about MCQST is the breadth and diversity of topics covered, and I look forward to exploring more of this research area of which I have seen only a small glimpse so far."

What's next for Julian?
In September 2023, Julian started my PhD in the group of Michael Knap, where he will further investigate different types of topological and fractonic systems, with a focus on their low-energy excitations. For Julian, it is very exciting to take part in the study of a paradigm which is not fully understood at the moment. He says, "I am very happy about the opportunity to study these questions in the enriching and dynamic scientific community here in Munich."

Jan Kochanowski

Static and Dynamic properties of quantum spin systems at non-zero T

TUM & LMU | Supervisor: Prof. Ignacio Cirac

Jan’s master thesis focuses on establishing rapid thermalization of a wide range of commuting nearest neighbor quantum spin systems Rapid thermalization means, that the time a system that is weakly coupled to some environment (modeled as a thermal bath) scales only polylogarithmicaly with the system size, i.e. very slowly. This is of interest in the context of both quantum memory devices, where people are interested in having this thermalization happen as slowly as possible and so-called Gibbs state sampling, where people are interested in preparing or sampling from these thermal states. In short, the group proves optimal bounds for the scaling of the thermalization time for commuting 1-dim systems at any temperature and nearest neighbor commuting D-dim systems at high temperature, by exploiting and establishing new connections between static (decay of spacial correlation) and dynamic properties of such systems.

"I feel extremely honored to have received this award and the recognition of the work that comes with it. For me it is a testament to the achievements that are possible when working in the right environment with the right people. And that I must be doing something right."

What's next for Jan?
Since finishing his masters degree in Munich, Jan started a PhD in which he continues the line of work that he started with his masters thesis, on establishing a general theory of thermalization of quantum spin systems. Jan is currently in Paris, working under joint supervision of one of his masters thesis supervisors Dr. Cambyse Rouzé (and 202 MCQST START Fellow), and Dr. Omar Fawzi in Lyon. Jan says "I am very much looking forward to what interesting mathematics and future achievements our collaboration brings."

Congratulations to Julian and Jan, and all the best for their future!