Nanophotonics-inspired Quantum Magnonics

This project will study the magnetic waves that -- just like light in vacuum -- propagate inside all magnets. These waves are very related to light waves but have very different properties. For instance, it is possible to control how fast they oscillate and how two magnetic waves interact with each other. This level of control is very difficult to achieve for light and for most types of waves. Moreover, these properties are very useful to transport and process information. For this reason these magnetic waves -- also called magnons -- are considered great candidates for future information processing devices which will substitute current electronics. A fascinating property of light waves is that, in a controlled environment, it is possible to exploit their quantum properties. These properties, like for instance quantum entanglement, arise when the interaction with the other systems is very small and when one is able to detect light with high precision. In the quantum regime, light can be used to process information much better than non-quantum computers, and to detect signals much better than any non-quantum sensor. Our project will ask the question of whether this advantage is achievable with magnons. So far, it is not even clear if one can reduce the interaction of magnons to other systems by a large enough amount, or whether one can detect very fragile quantum states of magnons. Answering this question could demonstrate that magnons are also interesting candidate information carriers for quantum technological applications, and thus could help improve current platforms for computing or sensing based on the laws of quantum physics.