Basel Universität
Departement für Physik und Astronomie
Departement für Physik und Astronomie

Prof. Dr. Daniel Loss

Professor of Theoretical Physics (Ordinarius)
Department of Physics
University of Basel
Klingelbergstrasse 82
4056 Basel
Switzerland


office 4.09
tel.: +41 (0)61 267 3749 (office)
e-mail:
research group: http://theorie5.physik.unibas.ch


administrative assistants

  Francois Erkadoo
tel.: +41 (0)61 267 3750
fax: +41 (0)61 267 1349
e-mail: 		Barbara Kammermann
tel.: +41 (0)61 267 3687
fax: +41 (0)61 267 3784
e-mail:



Short Biography

Daniel Loss received Diploma and Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics at the University of Zürich in 1983 and 1985, resp., where he stayed as postdoc for four more years. From 1989 to 1991 he worked as postdoc in Urbana (USA), with Nobel Laureate Prof. A. J. Leggett, and from 1991 to 1993 at IBM Research Center, NY (USA). In 1993 he moved to Vancouver (Canada) to become Assistant and then Associate Professor at Simon Fraser University. In 1996 he returned to Switzerland to become full Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Basel. Loss is director of the Basel Center for Quantum Computing and Quantum Coherence (QC2), and co-director of the Swiss National Center of Competence and Research (NCCR) in Nanoscale Science. He received several prestigious fellowships, is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, has been awarded the Humboldt Research Prize in 2005, and the Marcel Benoist Prize in 2010--the most prestigious science prize in Switzerland (see www.marcel-benoist.ch, and Uni news link).



Research Summary

Loss's research interests include many aspects of the theory of condensed matter systems with a particular focus on spin-dependent and phase-coherent phenomena (mesoscopics) in semiconducting nanostructures and molecular magnets. A major portion of Loss's current research involves the theory of spin dynamics, spin coherence, spintronics in two-dimensional electron gases, and spin-related phenomena in semiconducting quantum dots--artificial atoms and molecules. Part of this work is related to quantum information processing (QIP)--quantum computing and quantum communication in solid state systems with focus on spin qubits, where Loss and collaborators made seminal contributions. Their theoretical predictions and proposals have stimulated many further investigations, and in particular many experimental programs on spin qubits worldwide.

Current research includes spin relaxation and decoherence in quantum dots due to spin-orbit and hyperfine interaction; non-Markovian spin dynamics in bosonic and nuclear spin environments;  generation and characterization of non-local entanglement with quantum dots, superconductors, Luttinger liquids or Coulomb scattering in interacting 2DEGs; spin currents in magnetic insulators and in semiconductors; spin Hall effect in disordered systems; spin orbit effects in transport and noise; asymmetric quantum shot noise in quantum dots; entanglement transfer from electron spins to photons; QIP with spin qubits in quantum dots and molecular magnets; macroscopic quantum phenomena (spin tunneling and coherence) in molecular and nanoscale magnetism.



Selected Publications


Loss has more than 270 publications (with over 13'800 citations and h-factor 54, see web of science) and more than 270 invited conference talks.
Below is a selection of publications.

  1. D. Loss and D.P. DiVincenzo, Quantum Computation with Quantum Dots, Phys. Rev. A 57, 120 (1998).
  2. G. Burkard, D. Loss, and E. Sukhorukov, Noise of Entangled Electrons: Bunching and Antibunching, Phys. Rev. B 61, R16303 (2000).
  3. A. V. Khaetskii, D. Loss, and L. Glazman, Electron Spin Decoherence in Quantum Dots due to Interaction with Nuclei, Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 186802 (2002).
  4. B. Braunecker, P. Simon, and D. Loss, Nuclear Magnetism and Electron Order in Interacting One-Dimensional Conductors, Phys. Rev. B 80, 165119 (2009).
  5. M. Duckheim and D. Loss, Electric-Dipole-Induced Spin Resonance in Disordered Semiconductors, Nature Physics 2, 195 (2006).