Sebastian Egginger

What I do

Most of us have looked into a microscope and seen a different, tiny world. To go smaller still, there are microscopes that use electrons instead of light. That works, because these elementary particles – despite being often drawn as marbles – can also behave like waves. Their wavelength is much shorter than that of light, which enables the higher resolution. This so called particle-wave duality is typical in quantum physics, which is the best description of objects that are a million times smaller than the width of a hair. Another characteristic that is observable at these small sizes is entanglement. This means that two or more quantum systems can be more than their parts. While entanglement is a precious resource that opens many doors, current electron microscopes do not really make use of it. The reason is that building these devices is notoriously hard. I am part of a research project where we are still trying to do this and bring the electrons into contact with another quantum system. In this team, I am thinking about the new possibilities we have, thanks to entanglement and other mechanics. I derive schemes for how exactly we can use this new device. And for these schemes I also prove (at least on paper) what advantage we expect in comparison to the today’s microscopes.

Why it matters

A microscope that uses its electrons more cleverly gets more information out of each one. That matters most for fragile samples like proteins, viruses and various molecules, which the beam tends to destroy before a sharp image forms. Every improvement here feeds directly into drug discovery, materials science and much more.

Further reading