Rainer Blatt’s research focuses on trapped ions as a means to address fundamental questions in quantum optics, spectroscopy, and quantum information science. In the laboratory, individual ions are confined in electromagnetic traps under ultrahigh vacuum, and their electronic states are manipulated and probed using laser beams. Experiments in his group, including the demonstration of quantum gates and highly entangled ion strings, have established that ions are outstanding candidates for quantum bits in a quantum computer. Current research themes include the investigation of light-matter quantum interfaces, the scalability of ion traps for quantum information processing, and the use of trapped ions to simulate quantum processes.
