Welcome

This is the website of the Rotter group at the Institute for Theoretical Physics, Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien). Our main scientific interests are the propagation of waves through complex media, non-Hermitian physics and theoretical quantum optics.

News and latest research

New paper on acoustic particle manipulation in Nature Physics

In a nice collaboration with the team of Romain Fleury at EPFL and our former Marie-Curie fellow Nicolas Bachelard from Bordeaux, we published an article in Nature Physics that demonstrates how audible sound can be used to steer and rotate objects in complex environments. See the News&Views article by Emmanuel Fort and the EPFL press release for more information. Also watch a video on how an origami lotus flower is moved through our sound technique.

New paper on the flow of Fisher Information in Nature Physics

In collaboration with the team of Ulrich Kuhl in Nice and with Dorian Bouchet in Grenoble, we published an article in Nature Physics that demonstrates how the information that waves acquire about an object flows from this object to an outside observer. From our group Jakob Hüpfl, Felix Russo and Lukas Rachbauer were principally involved in this study – congratulations! See the News&Views article by Arthur Goetschy, TU Wien’s press release or the Highlight on the Homepage of the German Physical Society for more information.

Lukas defended his PhD

Lukas Rachbauer successfully defended his PhD thesis on “Classical and Quantum Waves in Complex Environments” – congratulations! Many thanks go to Ben Stickler (from Ulm University) and Thomas Juffmann (from the University of Vienna) for serving as external referees and examinators.

The triggered quantum avalanche

Together with the team of Jörg Schmiedmayer at the Atominstitut, we demonstrated how to halt and then trigger the super-radiant decay of an ensemble of inverted Nitrogen-Vacany spins in diamond. From our group, Oliver performed the calculations, reaching very good agreement with the experimental data. For more details see the corresponding open access paper in Physical Review Letters and the associated press release from TU Wien.