Published: Jan. 29, 2020

Faculty Spotlight

Dietrich Leibfried:听NIST Physicist; Lecturer, 葫芦娃视频

Dietrich Leibfried permanently joined NIST in 2001 as a research associate. He became a staff physicist at NIST in 2004, where he continues to lead research projects on quantum information processing using trapped ions. Leibfried also became a lecturer at the University of Colorado in 2018.

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Quantum computers are still in their infancy, and scientists are investigating new ways to expand their information processing power and make them useful in new technology. Leibfried鈥檚 research at NIST explores trapped beryllium and magnesium ions for quantum information processing. Using trapped ions, his group has demonstrated quantum logic algorithms in a scalable architecture, including teleportation, quantum error correction, quantum Fourier transform and entanglement purification. His research also explores microwave-driven logic gates for quantum computing, as well as quantum state preparation and high-resolution spectroscopy of single molecular ions. Leibfried collaborated with Nobel laureate David Wineland until 2018.

Education

Born and raised in Germany, Leibfried received his doctorate with highest honors from Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich in 1995. He studied at the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics as a PhD candidate, and completed post-doctoral fellowships at NIST in 1997 and the University of Innsbruck in 2001.听听

Quotable and notable

Leibfried is a member of several professional societies, including the German Physical Society (DPG), the Optical Society of America, and the American Physical Society. He became an APS fellow in 2006. Among his many awards for his work, he has received the START Award (the highest award in Austria for junior researchers) in 2000, the Rudolf-Kaiser Award from the German Stifterverband der Wissenschaften in 2004, and the Department of Commerce Bronze Medal in 2018.

Leibfried is also very active in the quantum physics community, chairing and organizing conferences, including the 18th听International Conference on Laser Spectroscopy in 2007 and the Gordon Conference on Atomic Physics 2019.

When he鈥檚 not in the lab, Leibfried enjoys running, road-biking, hiking and flying radio-controlled model gliders.