Dr. Ron Tenne who joined the Technion as a member of the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry and the Helen Diller Quantum Center in March 25, has been awarded a prestigious starting grant from the European Research Council (ERC) – 15 years after obtaining his Bachelor’s in Materials Science and Physics at the Technion.
Dr. Tenne received the grant for his research proposal, which aims to strengthen the connection between quantum optics and nanotechnology. Quantum optics deals with optical phenomena that require consideration of photons – the fundamental particles that make up light. A central challenge in this field is that scientists have only managed to generate a handful of quantum states of light so far.
In his research, Dr. Tenne aims to utilize nanoparticles to create new quantum states of light – even those that have not been previously conceived. One of the intriguing questions in this context is whether such particles could be used to sense our environment on extremely small spatial and temporal scales, using quantum sensing techniques. Dr. Tenne’s research group is developing methods to detect individual electrons flowing in a circuit using a nearby nanoparticle that “reports” on them.
After pursuing Master’s and PhD degrees in Optics at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Dr. Tenne continued on to a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Konstanz in Germany, where he has spent the last four years. At Weizmann, his advisor was Prof. Dan Oron together with the mentorship of the late Prof. Yaron Silberberg, and he focused on using light’s quantum properties to improve microscopy – developing successful ideas to enhance the resolution of optical microscopes using their inherent quantum nature. Ever since then, his research has focused on exploring the quantum state of light emitted from individual nano-sized particles one at a time.
Dr. Tenne, who is 42, arrived at the University of Konstanz as a Minerva Fellow, joining Prof. Alfred Leitenstorfer’s Ultrafast Phenomena and Photonics group. After two years, he became a Junior Group Leader and began supervising several Master’s and PhD students. Ron took over one of the focal points of Prof. Leitenstorfer’s group, studying nanoparticles in the quantum regime at very low temperatures and asking questions about their temporal dynamics. “What are the electrons’ dynamics within such nanoparticles? How do electrons behave over multiple time scales, ranging from picoseconds to several minutes?”
HIs research at the Technion is a natural evolution of his postdoc research, concentrating on colloidal nanoparticles that are prepared in chemical synthesis and can easily be integrated into different environments. These particles are already being used extensively in display technology. “If we can develop them as quantum sensors, this has the potential to revolutionize quantum imaging and quantum sensing. If we can harness their quantum properties, that would be really unique,” he insists.
The most important challenge of using such particles is that the energy of the emitted photons fluctuates over time. At Konstanz, Dr. Tenne’s group took one common type of particle and was able, for the first time, to pinpoint the mechanism that controls these fluctuations. “We suspected that it was due to electric fields, and we were indeed able to directly see it for the first time. One can now go back to the chemistry lab and explore how to eliminate this problem,” he explains. This important breakthrough was published in the journal Nano Letters in 2023.
Although they were able to observe the fluctuations at the second timescale, Dr. Tenne and his group have indirect evidence that this phenomenon occurs at least from the nanosecond time scale. At the Technion, he plans to use novel types of detectors in order to observe fluctuations at these finer time-scale resolutions. He plans to bring Single-Photon Avalanche Detector (SPAD) arrays – a technology that he has been using in Konstanz. Monitoring both the energy and time of emission of every photon will enable Dr. Tenne’s group to observe energy fluctuations on many timescales simultaneously.
“It is becoming more crucial to study these particles on the picosecond (10-12 seconds) time scale, with the hope of controlling them. We developed a system to observe a single nano-sized particle at such fast timescales, using pump-probe spectroscopy: a first laser pulse perturbs the system and a second one, after a given time delay, examines the state of the system. If we can examine different types of particles using this technology, we will then be able to really understand the life of the electron at a picosecond time scale. Only a handful of labs in the world are able to do this,” Dr. Tenne elaborates.
For the next few years, Ron Tenne will continue to be involved in research at the University of Konstanz alongside his work at the Technion. He believes that such collaboration will be beneficial to both universities and contribute to the already rich scientific relationship between Israel and Germany. He intends to maximize the synergy between the two universities and scientific communities.