Understanding and utilising complex systems

The more complex a system, the more it fascinates Clara Wanjura. How does physical behavior change when several systems are coupled together? For example, how does a system behave when sound and light are coupled quantum mechanically? What applications can be derived from this? How can coupled optical systems be used for machine learning and contribute to saving energy in the process?

To approach these questions scientifically and advance fundamental research in the fields of ‘Topology in Open Quantum Systems’ and ‘Neuromorphic Learning’, the award-winning young scientist has founded her own Minverva Fast Track Research Group at the MPL. The aim is to gain new, profound insights into complex systems and to leverage these for quantum and technological applications. To this end, the team will develop new theories and methods and collaborate with experimental partners.

Promoting outstanding female leaders

The MPG’s Minerva Fast Track Programme enables excellent female scientists to take on leadership positions at an early stage of their scientific careers and establish their first research groups. Alongside other MPG measures, the programme is an important building block in increasing the proportion of women in science at the management level. With Clara Wanjura, the MPL has gained another high-calibre research group leader and can support her in her long-term career planning. The physicist received no fewer than four awards for her dissertation on topology in driven-dissipative systems (‘Non-Hermitian Topology and Directional Amplification in Driven-Dissipative Cavity Arrays’), which she wrote under the supervision of Prof Andreas Nunnenkamp at the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge. While studying physics at the University of Ulm, she spent a formative period in England as part of her Master’s thesis. She discovered her enthusiasm for neuromorphic computing during her two-year postdoctoral phase at the MPL in the theory division of Prof. Florian Marquardt, with whom she will continue to collaborate.

“My research is based on the remarkable experimental possibilities we have today to design complex coupled quantum and classical systems,” explains the research group leader. “For example, I am interested in coupled optical systems, such as arrays of optical resonators or optomechanical systems that couple light and sound. While these systems already exhibit very rich physical behavior individually, this becomes even more complex when we couple many systems together. I am investigating the resulting collective behavior and how we can use this behavior for applications. These applications range from quantum-limited directional amplifiers and sensors to neuromorphic systems which can perform complex computations. The aim of neuromorphic computing is to make machine learning faster and more efficient. Currently, the energy consumption of our energy-hungry digital neural networks is increasing exponentially. In my group, we are developing new approaches as to how we could replace our digital neural networks with neural networks made of light in the future,” says the scientist.

You can find more information about the research group here.