Taming the Invisible in the Quantum World

Prof. Anna Musiał is the final QuanTour Hero on Under the Microscope. Her research at Wroclaw University of Science and Technology focuses on quantum dots that are invisible to the naked eye and operate in the infrared spectrum—critical for next-generation quantum communication.

In this episode

• What “taming the invisible” means: quantum dots too small to see that emit infrared light you can’t see either
• How Anna’s lab tests telecom-wavelength quantum dots grown by collaborators across Europe, to check whether they really emit single, identical or entangled photons
• How a sarcastic high school physics teacher and a set of Feynman lectures led her to physics in Wrocław, a postdoc at TU Berlin and back to Wrocław University of Science and Technology
• The project she picked: FI-SEQUR, a Polish-German project with companies that built a single photon source delivered straight into a standard telecom fibre
• Why an experimental physicist also has to be an electrician, a plumber and a diplomat
• Her three wishes: fairer ways to evaluate scientists than journal points, more time for research than other duties, and room for high-risk research

Key Takeaways

🔬 Taming the Invisible — Quantum dots are nanoscale and operate in infrared, making them invisible but crucial for quantum communication technologies.

⚛️ Quantum Dots & Secure Communication — Semiconductor quantum dots engineered to emit single photons enable highly secure quantum cryptography over fibre networks.

🌍 International Research Collaboration — Prof. Musiał contributes to the Polish-Berlin Brandenburg Photonics Initiative, collaborating across Germany, Poland, and beyond.

🔗 From Materials to Applications — The FI-SEQUR project demonstrated fiber-coupled single-photon sources, paving the way for scalable quantum networking.

🚀 Optimising Quantum Emitters — Improving InGaAs/GaAs quantum dots for high-performance emission in the telecom O-band.

Listen on

Collaborators & Industry Partners

• PicoQuant — Quantum Optics & Single Photon Technologies
• FIBRAIN — Photonics & Fiber Optics Solutions

About the guest

Anna Musiał is a Professor at Wrocław University of Science and Technology in Poland, studying light emitted by nanostructures whose properties differ completely from bulk crystals. She worked on the Fi-SEQUR project, a seven-partner collaboration with TU Berlin that produced a ready-to-use single-photon source at telecom wavelengths. She was a postdoc in Stephan Reitzenstein’s group at TU Berlin before returning to Wrocław in 2017.