Report on Laboratory Visits in Germany (October 5–8, 2026)

Following the ASPIRE symposium, our group had the opportunity to visit leading research institutions in the Munich area. We visited the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU) on October 5, the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ) on October 6, and the quantum computing company planqc on October 7, before returning to Japan on October 8.

At LMU, we visited the laboratories of Monika Aidelsburger, Johannes Zeiher, and Immanuel Bloch. We also met Rene, now a PhD student there, who did his master’s in our group at IMS; he kindly showed us around his lab.

At MPQ, I presented our work to the German side. This was a valuable opportunity to share our recent progress and discuss future directions. We then toured several laboratories, including the one where Cake, now a postdoctoral researcher in our group, completed his PhD. Fukuhara-sensei had also done his PhD in this lab many years earlier, a nice reminder of how connected our community is.

One instructive detail was the triangular optical breadboards the team calls “pizza slices.” Each one can be removed to modify the optics and then placed back in exactly its original position, which is a practical design idea for complex setups like ours.

On the final day, we visited planqc, a startup founded in 2022 as a spin-off from MPQ to industrialize quantum computing. The team presented their vision and technical approach, then showed us around their facilities.

Overall, the trip was highly productive. We learned a great deal from our German colleagues and shared our own results with them. I am grateful to ASPIRE and the organizers for making this visit possible.

Fig. 5: Group picture after the planqc visit (Oct 7)