Participant 1 – CNR

National Research Council of Italy

The National Research Council (CNR) is the largest public research institution in Italy, the only one under the Research Ministry performing multidisciplinary activities. Its structure include 7 scientific Departments among which the Department of Physical science and material technologies coordinates the physical-material area. The objectives of the Department include both the development of scientific thematic at the edge of knowledge and technological applications with significant economical outcomes. In the quantum science and technology field, the realization of devices for quantum sensing and information processing, with unmatchable characteristics, if compared to the classical systems has pivotal role.

Website of the National Research Council of Italy: https://www.cnr.it/

Website of the SPIN-CNR http://www.spin.cnr.it

Website of the CNR-NANO: http://www.nano.cnr.it

Website of the CNR-ISASI: https://www.isasi.cnr.it

http://www.nano.cnr.it/index.php?mod=men&id=159

Researches from the SPIN-CNR involved in the SUPERGALAX project

Dr. Mikhail Lisitskiy –Project Coordinator-(Gender male), Italian Citizenship, was born in 1963 in Moscow, Russia, In 1986 he has graduated cum laude in Physics of Metals at the Moscow Steel and Alloys Institute, Russia, and his Diploma has been declared equivalent to Italian Diploma in Physics. In 1991 Dr. Mikhail Lisitskiy has received his Ph.D. in Physical and Mathematical Sciences from the Moscow Steel and Alloys Institute, Russia, which has been declared equivalent to Italian Doctor of Science. Academician, Prof. Alexey Abrikosov was a scientific supervisor of his Ph.D. activity. Dr. Mikhail Lisitskiy is involved in the scientific activity since 1986, when his three years Ph. D. course begun, until now. After Ph. D. course, since 1989 he has continued his scientific activity at the Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (from 1991 – the Russian Academy of Sciences) of Moscow, Division of Physical Electronics, firstly as a permanent Researcher and from 1995 as a Senoir Researcher. Since 1997 till 2002 he has worked in Italy under different  research grants and contracts of the National Institute for the Physics of Matter (INFM) and the Italian Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN). In 2002 he has become a Contract Researcher of the National Research Council (CNR)  at the Institute of  Cybernetics “Eduardo Caianiello” of the CNR. Since 2008, January 1, as a winner of the Italian public competition, he has received a permanent position of the  National Research Council at the Institute of Cybernetics  “Eduardo caianiello” of the CNR with qualification of Researcher. From January of 2014 till now Dr. Mikhail Lisitskiy is a Researcher of the Institute of Superconductors, Oxides and Other Innovative Materials and Devices (acronym SPIN) of the National Research Council  of Italy. Dr. Mikhail Lisitskiy was a Scientific Supervisor of several graduate students and PhD students. Dr. Mikhail Lisitskiy has published over 79 papers in peer reviewed journals and has an h-index of 13 (Google Scholar).

The main scientific interests of  Dr. Mikhail Lisitskiy are: Superconductivity, especially, weak superconductivity; physics of Josephson devices, such as radiation detectors, SQUID sensors and qubit; physics and technological aspects of the planar hybrid tunable THz metamaterial structures based on liquid crystal as tuning mechanism.

Actual scientific interests of Dr. Mikhail Lisitskiy are: single X- and gamma –ray photon detector based on Josephson tunnel junction with trapped Abrikosov vortices; quantum coherence in Josephson devices including physics, material research and novel fabrication technologies for high coherence time superconducting qubits;

Areas of expertise of Dr. Mikhail Lisitskiy are: physics of detection mechanisms of nuclear (X –  and gamma – rays, alpha particles)  radiation based on Josephson tunnel junctions; fabrication techniques based on Al, Pb, Ta, Nb, and NbN as superconducting materials and AlO_x, AlN and a-Si:H as insulation materials for realization of thin film superconducting devices including radiation detectors, SQUIDs, nano-SQUIDs, microwave lumped resonators and Josephson phase qubits; ultralow temperature charge –pulse measurements by ³He/⁴He-dilution refrigerator (up to 70 mK) of energy spectrum of X-ray and alpha-particle radiations by superconducting tunnel junction detectors; low temperature measurements (up to 4.2 K) of the transmissivity |S₂₁| parameter of superconducting lumped LC resonators up to 40 GHz and experimental estimation of dielectric loss of insulation materials embedded in the resonators; ultralow temperature measurements by ³He/⁴He-dilution refrigerator (up to 20 mK) of Rabi oscillations and qubit spectroscopy of superconducting Josephson phase qubits.

Dr. MikkelEjrnaes (Gender male) was born the 1^st November 1973 in AArhus (Denmark) and is now a permanent researcher at the National Research Counci  (CNR) of Italy  since 2009. From 2014 till now Dr. MikkelElrnaes is a Researcher of the Institute of Superconductors, Oxides and Other Innovative Materials and Devices (acronym SPIN) of the National Research Council. Dr. MikkelEjrnaes has co-authered 60 scientific publications and has an h-index of 12.

The scientific workMikkelEjrnaes has been focused on non-equilibrium phenomenon in superconducting nanostructures along with their physical properties and interaction with light, covering all aspects in this context e.g.:

-The role of the superconducting material from conventional strong-coupling to superconductor-ferromagnetic multilayers and high-temperature superconductors.

-The role of the connectivity of the superconductor on the nanoscale ranging from a simply connected region to advanced geometries exploiting parallel nanowires e.g. non-simply connected superconductors.

-Non-equilibrium phenomenon ranging from picosecond spontaneous fluctuations to the nanosecond dynamics of a moving normal-metal/superconductor phase boundary.

-Light – Superconductor interaction ranging from single photon detection with unconventional detectors design on the nanoscale to timing precision of the detection mechanism.

The areas of expertise of MikkelEjrnaes most relevant to this project are:

-Fabrication of nanoscale superconducting structures on a wide range of materials.

-Interaction of superconducting nanostructures with light.

-Extremely low noise cryogenic measurements.

-Advanced superconductor design, measurement techniques and data analysis for capturing and harvesting specific interesting physical effects.

-Experimental work with superconducting qubit structures.

Dr.Nassim Chikhi (Gender male)was born in Algiers, Algeria, in 1980. He received Engineer degree in electronicsspecialized in electronic instrumentation from University of science and technology HouariBoumediene (USTHB) Algiers, Algeria, in 2003. MSc of micro and nano technology from Liverpool University, UK, in 2008, and PhD in Novel Technologies for Materials, Sensors and Imaging from University of Naples “Federico II,” Naples, Italy in 2012.

From 2004 to 2009, research assistant at Centre for Development of Advanced Technologies (CDTA) Algiers, Algeria. Working on neuronal network implementation on FPGA for ECG signal classification. Since 2009 focussed on Design, fabrication, and characterization of tunable& reconfigurable metamaterial based structures. From 2018, has a PostDoc position at the physics department of Naples University in collaboration with the CERN with main interest for the metamaterial as absorbers for trapped modes inside the collimators. From 2020 is a PostDoc of the SPIN-CNR in the SUERGALAX project.

Researches from the CNR-NANO involved in the SUPERGALAX project

Marco Affronte (gender male) is Full Professor of Physics at University of Modena e Reggio Emilia (I) and senior associate member of CNR-NANO since 2006. After graduating in Physics (Laurea with full marks and honours at University of Florence I, 1987), he obtained his Ph.D. at EcolePolytechniqueFédérale de Lausanne (CH) in 1991 and worked at CNRS in Grenoble (F) in 1992 as Post Doc awarded by European Marie Curie individual fellowship. Since 2014. M.A. was Director of the PhD School in Physics and NanoScience at UNIMORE (2014-19). His background is on Solid State Physics  and he worked on superconductivity, electronic transport and thermodynamic properties of materials, molecular magnetism. His interests are now focused on Nanomagnetism and Quantum Technologies in particular spintronics, graphene and on development of nano-devices and superconducting detectors working in quantum regime. M. A: was coordinator of 2 EU FET projects and member of the Steering Committee of several national and European projects. He serve(s/d) as project reviewer several National, EU and international agencies and member of evaluation panel for some of these (Eu-FET-ICT, French-ANR, Academy of Finland). Publications: more than 200 scientific articles, with more than 5800 citations, >50 invited/oral presentations at international conferences in last 10years and also to general public. (h-index=41WoS; ORCID ID: 0000-0001-5711-7822)

Alberto Ghirri (male, born in 1980, ORCID 0000-0001-7316-3765) is a permanent researcher at IstitutoNanoscienze – CNR in Modena, Italy. He has a background in experimental physics with more than 50 publications in international journals and h-index = 20. His studies are related to the fields of quantum magnetism,microwavesand hybrid quantum systems. In particular, he recently focused on the investigation of the coherent coupling between solid-states quantum systems, such as spin ensembles and semiconductor quantum dots, and microwave fields confined in a superconducting cavity.

Claudio Bonizzoni (male) obtained the PhD on Physics and Nanosciences (cum Laude) in 2018 at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. He was Post-Doctoral research fellow at the Department of Physics, Informatics and Mathematics in Modena in 2018 and 2019. He’s currently Post-Doctoral research fellow at IstitutoNanoscienze CNR in Modena. His main activity concerns spin qubits, investigation of coherent spin-photon coupling, superconducting resonant devices and spectroscopic techniques at microwave frequency and low temperatures. 9 publications (up to 2019. ORCID ID: 0000-0001-9649-2203).

Researches from the CNR-ISASI involved in the SUPERGALAX project

Dr. Berardo Ruggiero (Gender male), Italian Citizenship, was born  on 1962 in Naples, Italy. He received the doctoral degree “cum laude” in Physics from the University “Federico II” of Naples, Italy, in 1988. Berardo Ruggiero has been researcher (1988-2001) and senior researcher (2002-2019) at the CNR-ISASI, where he is now Research Director and the Responsible of projects in the field of Science Quantum Technologies , as well as of cryogenic laboratory at low noise in the very low temperature region (1 K- 40 mK). He is the responsible of Scientific Projects between INFN Section Naples and ISASI CNR on Reduced graphene oxide on silicon-based structure as novel broadband photodetector  (rGo-Photodetectors- 2020) and on Superconductivity Enhancement via Topology in Integrated Networks(SETIN – 2022). He has been responsible of Scientific European Projects on Nanotechnologies and national Projects on Superconducting Networks (FIRB, Commesse PRIN, Regione Campania L.41, and L.3.17, etc etc)  as well as Commessa CNR “MIcro e Nano Dispositivi Strutturati per sensoristica superconduttiva e fotonica -MIND”, MD.P04.022 in CNR – Dipartimento Materiali e Dispositivi (2010-2013). B.R. is a member of “Consiglio di Istituto”(2019 up to now). B.R. has been contract professor in Physics at Department di Ingegneria of Università della Campania “Luigi vanvitelli” (from 2002 – 2017). He has also been the President of the Associazione MQC2 to enhance international scientific exchange in the fields of Physical Sciences, Mathematics and Natural sciences in general, with particular attention to modern physics, to quantum mechanics and to advanced computer science. 
The main scientific interests of Berardo Ruggiero can be characterized as the study (mainly experimental) of superconducting networks based on Josephson junctions and qubits. He has been member of the steering committee of International Workshops on Macroscopic Quantum Computing. In 2004 he has been co-author of the volume edited by Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publisher, USA “Quantum Computing and Quantum Bits in Mesoscopic Systems” in particular with A.J. Leggett (2003 Physics Nobel Laureate). He is author of international volumes, more than 100 papers on referred journals. He is also author of national technogical patents and 130 contributions to international conferences.Actual scientific interests of Dr. Berardo Ruggiero are:  Solid State Physics; Weak superconductivity based on the Josephson effect; Physics of Josephson devices,  superconducting nanostructures, critical current fluctuations and electrodynamics of superconducting devices. Macroscopic quantum phenomena, Superconducting quantum bits, low noise measurements at ultra-low temperatures by using dilution refrigerators, dc and RF techniques.quantum coherence in Josephson devices including physics, material research and novel fabrication technologies for high coherence time superconducting qubits;  Areas of expertise of Dr. Berardo Ruggiero are: macroscopic quantum coherence, quantum computing, superconducting qubits; transport properties in superconductor-based networks; phase dynamics in unconventional junctions,low temperature measurements (up to 4.2 K)  ultralow temperature measurements by ³He/⁴He-dilution refrigerator (up to 20 mK) of Rabi oscillations and qubit spectroscopy of superconducting Josephson phase qubits.

Description of significant infrastructure and major items of technical equipment, relevant to the SUPERGALAX project

The research team has a long time experience in fabrication of thin film devices based on Josephson junctions and superconducting nanonwires. The research team has all necessary technological equipment for a full cycle device fabrication starting from photo mask realization up to final assembling of chips on chip carrier, namely:

Clean room facilities;

Laser writer system for laser beam photolithography Microtech LASERWRITER LW-2004;

Upgraded SEM FEI Quanta 600 adapted to electron beam with energy of 30 keV in modality of EBL (Electron Beam Lithography );

Laboratory of UV photolithography equipped by Karl Suss  mask aligner, Standard Cost Effective Equipment Hotplate 1100;

High vacuum dc-magnetron multi target (Nb, Al, Si) deposition system equipped with a cryopump and with an additional load-look chamber. Both the RF source and the extractor ion source IQE 11/35 (SPECS Company, Germany) are mounted into the load-look chamber;

Vacuum deposition system Leybold for thermal evaporation both metallic (Pb, Au, Al) and insulation  (SiO) thin films;

JUPITER II plasma system for reactive ion etching of thin films;

Wedge bonder; Alpha Step Profilometer;