The Nanomaterials pillar of the UKZN Nanotechnology Platform is a grouping of research scientists with a common interest in synthesizing nanomaterials for application in a wide variety of possible uses.
The Quantum science and technology pillar decided to work mainly on nanophotonic systems operating in the quantum regime. There are a number of reasons for this:
- In recent years the miniaturisation of processing devices has progressed rapidly and is now firmly based at the nanoscale, where a new generation of ‘nanophotonic’ devices that control light has become possible.
- New devices include single-photon sources and switches, which are important ingredients for quantum computing and quantum communication – two areas set to revolutionize the computing and communications industries.
- A key challenge in nanophotonic quantum devices is finding out how to deal with loss and new schemes have recently been proposed that are able to exploit loss in these systems. The systems are inherently open-quantum systems. Open quantum systems and nanophotonics are the two main research activities of the quantum group at UKZN and the topic of ‘Nanophotonic open quantum systems’ is a natural fit.
The research on this topic has the potential to overcome loss in nanophotonic systems and lead to fundamentally new ways of manipulating quantum information in nanoscale quantum devices for future computing and communication applications.
| Name | School at UKZN |
| Adam Skelton | School of Pharmaceutical Sciences |
| Ilya Sinayskiy | School of Chemistry and Physics |
| Karin Pruessner | School of Chemistry and Physics |
| Leigh Jarvis | School of Engineering |
| Mark Tame | School of Chemistry and Physics |
| Name | Level |
| Jason Francis | PhD |
| Marco Mariola | Postdoc fellow |
| Sanele Dlamini | PhD |
| Toshiyuki Tashima | Postdoc fellow |
| Xia Zhang | Postdoc fellow |
| Yaseera Ismail | Postdoc fellow |