The research of Jörg Wrachtrup has established a completely new and very successful field of research at the interface between solid state physics and quantum optics, ranging from materials science to biomedical research and based on groundbreaking work on the optical detection of single spins in solids. Already in the early 1990s Wrachtrup succeeded in precisely controlling single electron and nuclear spins in solids. These methods later became the basis of quantum control in solids. Jörg Wrachtrup and his team made great progress with the identification of individual paramagnetic nitrogen vacancies in diamond, so-called NV centers, which provided a promising platform for quantum nanoscience. Jörg Wrachtrup’s groundbreaking contributions in this field include the proof of entanglement between nanopositioned defects and electronic and nuclear spins, the first non-destructive quantum measurements on solid-state spins, and error correction based on nuclear spin clusters.
Wrachtrup’s research led to the systematic study of different solid-state spin systems, which resulted in the discovery of quantum defect spins in materials such as silicon carbide and gallium nitride, and in two-dimensional materials such as graphene. Jörg Wrachtrup was the first to recognize the importance of NV centers for quantum information technology, metrology, and biomedical imaging.
