Prof. Dr. Rainer Blatt

Rainer Blatt graduated in physics from the University of Mainz in 1979. He completed his doctorate in 1981 and worked as research assistant in the team of Günter Werth. In 1982 Blatt received a research grant of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) to go to the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics (JILA), Boulder, where he worked with John L. Hall (Nobel Prize 2005) for a year. In 1983 he moved to the Freie Universität Berlin, and in the following year joined the working group of Peter E. Toschek at the University of Hamburg. After another stay in the US, Rainer Blatt applied to qualify as a professor by receiving the “venia docendi” in experimental physics in 1988. From 1989 until 1994 he worked as a Heisenberg research fellow at the University of Hamburg and returned several times to JILA in Boulder. In 1994, he was appointed professor of physics at the University of Göttingen and in 1995, he became professor of experimental physics at the University of Innsbruck, where he was made emeritus professor in 2020. From 2003 to 2024 Blatt has also held the position of Scientific Director at the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW). Rainer Blatt is married, with three children.

Experimental physicist Rainer Blatt has carried out trail-blazing experiments in the fields of precision spectroscopy, quantum optics, quantum metrology, and quantum information processing. He works with atoms caught in ion traps which he manipulates using laser beams. This work is based on joint work with, and suggestions made in the mid-1990s by theorists Ignacio Cirac and Peter Zoller. In 2003, Blatt’s group was able, for the first time, to transfer quantum information of one atom onto another in a totally controlled manner (teleportation). Nature journal reported the experiment and gave it pride of place on the cover. Two years later, Rainer Blatt’s group managed to entangle up to eight atoms in a controlled manner. The creation of this first “quantum byte” (qubyte) was a further step on the way towards a quantum computer. By 2011, the team managed to push this record to 14 entangled atoms and since 2018, they have routinely worked with 20 to 50 fully controlled ion qubits. Since 2011 Blatt’s group has taken important steps towards successful quantum error correction and succeeded in encoding logical qubits with up to seven physical qubits. The group has also realised a universal quantum simulator, performed open systems quantum simulations and, for the first time, demonstrated a quantum simulation of a lattice gauge theory. Currently, Blatt’s team routinely operates with several quantum computers, working towards the implementation of scalable quantum computation and quantum simulation, as well as their applications for quantum metrology.

Rainer Blatt is also known for his support of young scientists. Many members of his team have received prestigious awards and have since been appointed professorships at universities abroad. Rainer Blatt has received numerous awards for his achievements in the fields of quantum optics, quantum information and metrology. He was awarded the 2023 Herbert Walther Prize by the German Physical Society and Optica, the 2019 Micius Quantum Prize, the 2016 International Quantum Communication Award and the 2015 John Stewart Bell Prize for Research on Fundamental Issues in Quantum Mechanics and their Applications. In 2013, the Australian Academy of Science announced him as Frew Fellow and he also received the “Humboldt-Forschungspreis”. In 2012, the German Physical Society awarded him the “Stern-Gerlach-Medal”. Together with Ignacio Cirac he won the 2009 Carl Zeiss Research Award. In 2008 he received an ERC Advanced Grant by the European Research Council. In 2006, he received the Schrödinger Prize of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

In 2022, he was awarded the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Arts 1st Class and in 2014, he received the “Tiroler Landespreis for Science” by the regional government. In 2011, he was awarded the Science Award for Outstanding Achievements of the Stiftung Südtiroler Sparkasse.

In 2020, the Universidad Complutense Madrid awarded him an honorary doctorate. Rainer Blatt is a full member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the European Academy of Science and Arts, the German Academy of Sciences, “Leopoldina”, and a foreign member of the National Academy of Sciences (US) and the Royal Spanish Academy of Sciences.