Aalto University: The Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters has awarded Mika A. Sillanpää for his outstanding contributions to promote quantum research

The physics award of the Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters and Professor Theodor Homén has been granted to Professor Mika A. Sillanpää for his significant contributions in the research of quantum optomechanics, superconductive qubits and magnetoacoustics.

The research team led by Sillanpää was able to establish quantum entanglement between a pair of macroscopic drumheads. Sillanpää, Assistant Professor Laure Mercier de Lépinay and the rest of the team were able to simultaneously measure the position and the momentum of the two drumheads. This should not be possible according to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. The achievement was awarded the Physics World Breakthrough of the Year 2021.

Sillanpää has been thrice awarded the grant from the European Research Council. In 2021, he received EUR 2.5 million of ERC Advanced Grant funding from the European Research Council for the GUANTUM project. The goal of the project is to determine the effect of gravity on the quantum-mechanical states and vibrations of two gold spheres on a very small scale, and at extremely low temperatures.

‘With this research, we are trying to solve a hundred-year-old mystery of physics: The incompatibility of the general relativity and quantum mechanics,’ says Sillanpää.