The Quantum Science Lab deals essentially with two sets of questions: quantum information and quantum life science. Quantum physics deals with the properties of matter at the microscopic scale. One of the most important recent results in quantum physics is the discovery that information con be encoded in (and decoded from) the microscopic states of matter. The Quantum Information group is committed to fundamental theoretical research on the basics aspects of quantum information, quantum information processing (QIP) and their implementation in the real world. The challenge is to devise novel manipulation techniques of such states and derive new (quantum) algorithms capable of solving efficiently problems whose complexity is beyond reach of classical computers. The ISI group has been over the years involved, with a leadership role, in several european as well national initiatives on QIP. Widely recognized notions in the QIP community as, decoherence-free subspaces, holonomic quantum computation and excitonic QIP are just some of the major accomplishments of the ISI group.
On the biology side, Nature is the great nanotechnologist: the chemical processes that underlie life all take place at the quantum mechanical level. Recent research has revealed that, hundreds of millions of years ago, Nature discovered how to put coherent quantum dynamics to use at the molecular scale to enhance the rate of energy transfer and to optimize the mechanisms by which energy and information are transformed at the molecular scale.
These enhancements occur despite the fact that biological systems are hostile environments for quantum coherence: they are hot and wet, with many degrees of freedom to decohere quantum processes. The enhanced efficiency stems from the use of entanglement and non-classical states of matter: back when life began, Nature discovered the fundamental techniques of what we now call quantum information processing, and has been refining those techniques ever since to create highly efficient ways of handling energy. The purpose of the ISI program on quantum mechanics in biology is to use techniques of quantum information processing to investigate the quantum mechanics of energy transport and transformation in biological systems.