The €1,000 prize is awarded by the QTF for the best discovery made by one of its members in the last year. The judging panel consisted of Mikko Merimaa (VTT), Elisabetta Paladino (University of Catania), Martti Kauranen (Tampere University). The judges praised the paper for successfully tackling fundamental questions in quantum calorimetry and opening up new experimental directions fo the field. They also specifically praised Karimi for her role as main author of the work.

‘We have a bigger goal in mind,’ says Karimi. ‘It’s great to have developed this detector, but now that we have it, the real research actually begins!’ The team in the PICO group are aiming to do experimental work to get data to help the wider research community make more advances in quantum thermodynamics. ‘This detector is a beautiful testbed for quantum thermodynamics. We’re now looking to answer many long-standing questions. The dream would be to detect single microwave photons from superconducting qubits.’

Karimi says that part of the key of her work were the facilities and infrastructure at Aalto, particularly that the cleanroom and equipment at OtaNano have been really valuable. ‘This prize is a recognition to all our research group PICO and coauthors, and I want to thank especially my supervisor Prof. Jukka Pekola for his support and continuous collaboration.’

Karimi works in QTF and Marie Curie training network QuESTech. The work for the Nature Communications paper was funded through Academy of Finland, the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the European Research Council program and Marie Sklodowska-Curie actions.

https://www.aalto.fi/en/news/quantum-technology-finland-awards-bayan-karimi

For more information please see the underlain papers:

Congratulations to Jonne Koski and co-authors!

Here is the paper abstract:

Recently, the fundamental laws of thermodynamics have been reconsidered for small systems. The discovery of the fluctuation relations has spurred theoretical and experimental studies. The concept of entropy production has been extended to the microscopic level by considering stochastic trajectories of a system coupled to a heat bath. However, this has not been studied experimentally if there are multiple thermal baths present. Here, we measure, with high precision, the distributions of microscopic entropy production in a single-electron box consisting of two islands with a tunnel junction. The islands are coupled to separate heat baths at different temperatures, maintaining a steady thermal non-equilibrium. We demonstrate that stochastic entropy production from trajectories of electronic transitions is related to thermodynamic entropy production from dissipated heat in the respective thermal baths. We verify experimentally that the fluctuation relations for both definitions are satisfied. Our results reveal the subtlety of
irreversible entropy production in non-equilibrium.

Read a synopsis here.

Read the full text here.