FSQT 2020
The Fundamental Sciences & Quantum Technologies using Atomic Systems 2020 (FSQT 2020) conference was held in honor of Professor Bhanu Pratap Das, Director Designate of the CQuERE vertical, TCG CREST, Kolkata. The online event was conducted between 28th September and 1st October, 2020. The themes of the conference were Fundamental Physics using Atoms and Molecules, Light-Matter Interactions, and Quantum Information and Computation.
The four-day webinar was organized by the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), Ahmedabad, and was in collaboration with SciRox, Science club of the Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar. The poster awards were sponsored by TCG CREST. Two of the organizers of the conference are from Team CQuERE, Prof. Debashis Mukherjee (Chair), and Dr. Srinivasa Prasannaa. The other organizers are Prof. B. K. Sahoo (PRL, Ahmedabad; Convener), Prof. Anders Kastberg (Institut de Physique de Nice, France), Dr. Tapan Mishra (Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati), and Dr. Bindiya Arora (Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar).
Several leading researchers from across the globe presented their works. There were a total of 16 keynote talks, 17 invited talks, and 8 contributing speakers.
On the fundamental physics and the light-matter interaction fronts, the talks spanned an array of cutting-edge developments on both the experimental and theoretical sectors. The list includes but is not limited to making headway in probing CP-violating sector using novel methods for diatomic systems and exploiting the power of polyatomic molecules as well as radioactive diatomic systems, using atomic systems to search for dark matter in new ways, making use of heavy atomic systems in looking for the elusive nuclear anapole moment, highly charged ions for ultra-precise clocks, studying beta decay of He-6 for extracting new physics, quantum synchronization, nuclear Schiff moments, quantum phase transitions, Faraday instabilities, and charge radii. There were also presentations on the latest upper bounds obtained from experiment, on exotic particle physics properties such as the electron and neutron electric dipole moments. The list would be incomplete without mentioning the talks on the ongoing body of work in the challenging and compute-intensive topic of developing codes and many-body methods in electronic structure theory, which forms a necessary part of the above mentioned probes of new physics. The topics in this sector included light-matter interactions in a relativistic framework, synergy between many-body theory and non-linear dynamics in a machine learning framework, efficient implementations based on tensor factorizations, and developing programs that include QED effects. The talks in the field of quantum information and computation encompassed a wide variety of topics in the forefront of the field, including state-of-the-art developments in superconducting, ion trap and cold atoms quantum computing platforms, advancements in the field of quantum sensing, progress in quantum chemistry computations, including spin symmetry-adapted approaches in the noisy intermediate
scale era, satellite-based quantum communications, the role of time delays in quantum information processing, and discrete time crystals in quantum spin networks.
The conference certainly served not only as a platform for bringing together researchers and initiating new collaborations in the emerging and exciting field of quantum science and technologies, but also has paved way for cross-fertilization of ideas across the three fields.
The fourth day of the conference also included a Felicitation program for Prof. Bhanu Pratap Das, where several fond memories were shared by those of us who have been fortunate to be a part of his academic journey, which spans the three fields that formed the theme of the conference. At the end of the felicitation ceremony, Prof. Das made some personal remarks which were profound and touching for his appreciation of his colleagues and for providing a personal perspective of the oeuvre of his research. It is fitting to conclude the article with an observation that the wide spectrum of interest speaks volumes on the impact of Prof. Das’ work on the international scientific community.
Details of the Conference including all of the talks can be accessed from the YouTube links by clicking here.