European Research Council Awards Grant to Researcher for Quantum Field Theory Project

Tobias J. Osborne, who serves as a Professor of theoretical physics at the Leibniz Universitat Hannover’s Institute for Theoretical Physics and the Cluster of Excellence, Centre for Quantum Engineering and Space-Time Research (QUEST), has received a €1.34 million grant for the coming five years from the European Research Council (ERC) for his project titled ‘Quantum Field Theory, the Variational Principle, and Continuous Matrix Product States’.

The project is focused on applying novel ideas based on the quantum information theory for studying the basics of quantum fields. The ERC awards the ERC Starting Grants to encourage young researchers carrying out advanced research.

Prior to joining as a professor of theoretical physics at the Leibniz Universitat Hannover’s Institute of Quantum Optics in August 2010, Osborne worked as a fellow between 2009 and 2010 at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berling. After completing his PhD in quantum information theory at the University of Queensland in 2003, he joined Royal Holloway, University of London as a lecturer in 2005. In 2009, he was designated as a Reader.

Quantum field theory is a branch of physics and is posing unique challenges to theorists. However, the new ideas derived from the field of quantum information theory in quantum entanglement study can be used for studying the powerful correlated systems. The development of and use of these novel ideas for studying theories that model the components of the universe is the core focus of the project. The research assures a new approach to study the interactions and movement of large clusters of quantum particles by eliminating the renowned ‘sign problem,’ which was a bottleneck in earlier studies.