About State Key Laboratory of Low-Dimensional Quantum Physics

State Key Laboratory of Low-Dimensional Quantum Physics

The State Key Laboratory of Low-Dimensional Quantum Physics is a fundamental research laboratory managed by the Department of Physics of Tsinghua University in Beijing. It studies quantum physics and quantum information in low-dimensional quantum systems — materials and structures, such as atomically thin layers, interfaces, nanostructures and confined atomic systems, in which quantum behaviour is shaped by reduced dimensionality. The laboratory was approved by the Ministry of Science and Technology in 2011 and accepted in 2013, was rated an excellent laboratory by the ministry in 2015, and in 2024 officially received approval for its entity construction. Its present director is Professor Kaili Jiang, and the director of its academic advisory board is Xianhui Chen, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Unusually for a laboratory of its formal age, it traces its roots back to 1983, when its predecessor began work on atoms and molecules at Tsinghua.

Low-dimensional systems are where much of modern quantum physics happens. Confine electrons to a sheet, a wire or an interface and new states of matter appear: unconventional and high-temperature superconductivity, novel quantum materials, and the building blocks proposed for quantum simulation, quantum computation and quantum precision measurement. The laboratory's stated purpose is to advance the frontiers of quantum physics and quantum information in such systems while also addressing significant national strategic needs in quantum science and technology — a dual mission, curiosity-driven and strategic, that shapes its six research groups and its heavy investment in shared experimental platforms.

Roots from 1983 to the 2007 renaming

The laboratory's own account dates its foundation to 1983, with an initial focus on atom and molecule studies. Its first academic advisory board chair was Wang Daheng, the celebrated optical physicist described on the laboratory's page as a hero of China's "two bombs and one satellite" programme. The laboratory soon became a key laboratory of the Ministry of Education, and its research expanded from its atomic and molecular base into atomic and molecular physics and nanoscience more broadly.

A fuller genealogy, preserved in a cover profile of the laboratory in the journal Frontiers of Physics, explains how the present institution was assembled. The Key Laboratory of Atomic and Molecular Nanosciences of the Ministry of Education, together with the State Key Laboratory of Low-Dimensional Quantum Physics run by Tsinghua University, was founded in 2007 on the basis of that Ministry of Education key laboratory, by integrating several existing units: the Key Laboratory of Quantum Information and Measurement of the Ministry of Education, a laboratory for new material simulation and calculation associated with the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Research Center for Atomic and Molecular Nanosciences, and the Tsinghua-Foxconn Research Center. In the laboratory's own shorter telling, in 2007 the laboratory changed its name to the Laboratory of Low-Dimensional Quantum Physics. The two accounts agree on the essential point: by 2007 a set of atomic, molecular, quantum information and nanoscience groups at Tsinghua Physics had been gathered under the low-dimensional quantum physics name, providing the base from which state key laboratory status was sought.

Approval in 2011, acceptance in 2013, excellence in 2015

The formal state key laboratory chronology is precise and is given identically by the laboratory and by its directory record. The laboratory was approved by the Ministry of Science and Technology in 2011 and accepted — that is, it passed the acceptance review that follows a construction period — in 2013. In 2015 it was evaluated as an excellent laboratory by the Ministry of Science and Technology. That sequence matters when reading sources: references to a laboratory founded in 1983, renamed in 2007 and approved in 2011 describe one continuing institution at successive stages, not three different laboratories.

The laboratory's institutional development did not stop with the excellent rating. Its own current page adds that in 2024 the laboratory officially received approval for its entity construction. In the context of China's reorganisation of its state key laboratories in the 2020s, such approval marks the laboratory's confirmation as a substantive, separately constituted research entity rather than a label carried by a department — a significant administrative step that the laboratory records in the same breath as its 2011, 2013 and 2015 milestones.

Six research groups

The laboratory organises its research activities into six groups, and the list is the clearest map of what low-dimensional quantum physics means in practice at Tsinghua. The first group works on low-dimensional superconductors and the mechanism of high-temperature superconductivity, one of the central unsolved problems of condensed matter physics, pursued in thin films, interfaces and layered materials where superconductivity can be tuned and probed with unusual precision. The laboratory's publication record shows the character of this work: a 2024 study of sublattice dichotomy in monolayer iron selenide, a superconductor consisting of a single atomic layer, carried the laboratory's affiliation and addressed the pairing mechanism of iron-based superconductors, an essential question for that family of materials.

The second group works on the detection and manipulation of non-equilibrium states in low-dimensional quantum systems — states driven away from equilibrium by light, current or fields, whose fleeting properties can reveal physics invisible in static measurements. The third group covers the theoretical design and precise fabrication of low-dimensional quantum materials, pairing prediction with the ability to actually grow and structure the predicted material. The fourth group pursues quantum precision measurement based on low-dimensional systems, using quantum behaviour itself as the measuring instrument. The fifth works on quantum simulation and quantum computation based on low-dimensional systems, in which a controllable quantum system is used to model an intractable one, or to compute. The sixth group, completing the arc from phenomenon to technology, works on the application of information devices in low-dimensional quantum systems.

People: 68 members and national talent programmes

The laboratory reports 68 members, among them four academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, 39 individuals selected for various national talent programmes, and 27 individuals recognised in national youth talent projects. Those proportions are striking: a majority of the laboratory's members hold national talent distinctions, and a large youth contingent indicates a deliberate succession pipeline in a field where experimental techniques take years to master. The laboratory is managed by Tsinghua's Department of Physics and, as the earlier Frontiers of Physics profile records, is authorised to confer master's and doctoral degrees and to offer postdoctoral research programmes, so its members are simultaneously researchers and supervisors training the next generation of quantum physicists.

Leadership is clearly recorded. The current director is Professor Kaili Jiang, a Tsinghua physicist whose own published research, as indexed in scholarly databases, includes extensive work on carbon nanotubes, including their growth, superaligned films and applications — a fitting background for a laboratory built on low-dimensional materials, since a nanotube is the archetypal one-dimensional quantum system. The academic advisory board is directed by academician Xianhui Chen. Earlier profiles recorded a larger academician presence in the laboratory's first state key laboratory years — the Frontiers of Physics profile counted seven elected academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences among the members, alongside Cheung Kong Scholars, National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scientists recipients and New Century Excellent Talents — figures that describe that earlier moment and should not be confused with the laboratory's current count of four academicians among 68 members.

World-class platforms and instruments

Low-dimensional quantum physics is an instrument-intensive science, and the laboratory has built its work around shared platforms that it describes as world-class. It lists six: Precision Quantum Transport; Precision Optical Measurement; Scanning Tunneling Microscope; Materials Growth and Micro-fabrication; a Theoretical and Numerical Simulation Center; and a Superconducting Technology Research and Development Center. Together they cover the full experimental cycle of the field — grow a material, fabricate it into a device, cool it and measure its electrical and optical behaviour at the atomic scale, and model the results theoretically.

The equipment inventory behind those platforms comprises more than 150 pieces or sets of instruments with a total value of approximately 103 million RMB. The laboratory names, among others, an electron-beam lithography system, an ultra-low temperature scanning tunneling microscope, a low-temperature scanning tunneling microscope, a dual-frequency etching system, a transmission electron microscope, a low-temperature superconducting vacuum microscope, a chemical vapor deposition system, a semi-automatic nanoimprint lithography system, a sputtering system, a high-sensitivity magnetic field measurement system and an ultra-high resolution scanning electron microscope. Scanning tunneling microscopes at ultra-low temperature are the signature tools of this science: they image and spectroscopically probe surfaces atom by atom under the extreme conditions where quantum states are cleanest, and the presence of both ultra-low and low-temperature variants signals depth rather than a single showcase instrument.

Earlier statement of research directions

The laboratory's direction was already legible in its earlier published statements, which the Frontiers of Physics profile summarised as four lines of work targeting the frontier of low-dimensional quantum physics: the fabrication of low-dimensional quantum systems and materials; methods and techniques of precision measurement under extreme conditions; novel quantum phenomena of low-dimensional and nano and quantum-confined systems; and the development of fundamental theory and the design of low-dimensional quantum systems. Comparing that list with the present six groups shows continuity of intent with a sharpening of structure — precision measurement and fabrication persist as named commitments, while quantum simulation and computation and information device applications, implicit in the earlier framing, have become groups in their own right.

The same early profile shows the laboratory was consciously positioned within national planning, guided by the essentials of the national medium and long-term science and technology plan for 2006 to 2020 and by Tsinghua University's own development plans, and that its emergence was presented as meeting the needs of national economic, scientific and technological development as well as the requirements of state key laboratory assessment. That positioning has endured: the laboratory's current page repeats that, as a fundamental research laboratory, it is dedicated to addressing significant national strategic needs in quantum science and technology, alongside advancing the discipline's frontiers.

Collaboration and training role

The laboratory has from its state key laboratory years carried out close collaborations with scientists from universities and research institutes across China and the world, as its journal profile records, and its establishment was expected to play a significant role in training the young talents who would advance research and technological innovation in low-dimensional quantum physics. Its affiliations visible in the publication record reflect that connectedness: laboratory papers appear jointly with other national centres for condensed matter and quantum research, and its members publish in the international journals and preprint servers through which the field communicates daily results.

Training is structural, not incidental. A laboratory authorised for master's and doctoral degrees and postdoctoral programmes, embedded in one of China's strongest physics departments, recruiting through national youth talent schemes and reporting 27 members recognised in national youth talent projects, functions as a production line for expertise in techniques — cryogenics, vacuum science, nanofabrication, tunneling spectroscopy, quantum transport — that few institutions can teach. For a strategic technology area in which China, like other major research nations, is investing heavily, that training output may prove as consequential as any single discovery.

Place among Tsinghua's laboratories

Tsinghua University hosts a notably large number of state key laboratories — a study of the system by the Center for Security and Emerging Technology counted 13 hosted by Tsinghua, the highest number for any academic institution in its dataset — and the Low-Dimensional Quantum Physics laboratory is the university's flagship for fundamental quantum matter research within that company. Its profile differs from engineering laboratories in the same system: its outputs are primarily knowledge, instruments, trained people and device principles, evaluated by peer judgement of scientific excellence, of which the 2015 excellent rating is the documented instance.

Readers should keep the laboratory's identity precise. It is the laboratory managed by Tsinghua's Department of Physics in Beijing, approved in 2011, directed by Kaili Jiang, with roots in the atomic and molecular laboratory of 1983 and the renaming of 2007. Other low-dimensional and quantum laboratories exist elsewhere in China, and Tsinghua itself houses other quantum-related groups, but the combination of dates, six research groups, six named platforms and more than 150 instruments valued at about 103 million RMB belongs to this laboratory alone.

Outlook under entity construction

The laboratory's own narrative ends, for now, with the 2024 approval of its entity construction. That step, following the excellent evaluation of 2015 and a decade of operation as a state key laboratory, positions it for the next phase of China's quantum science programme with a confirmed institutional form, a 68-member faculty core, and platforms spanning materials growth to superconducting technology. Its research agenda — high-temperature superconductivity's mechanism, non-equilibrium quantum states, designed quantum materials, quantum precision measurement, quantum simulation and computation, and low-dimensional information devices — maps closely onto the questions that define the worldwide field.

Whether judged by its genealogy, reaching back through the 2007 integration to Daheng Wang's advisory chairmanship in 1983, or by its present scale and ratings, the State Key Laboratory of Low-Dimensional Quantum Physics is one of the principal addresses for fundamental quantum research in China. This profile has confined itself to facts the laboratory and credible profiles state about the laboratory itself — its dates, people, groups, platforms and instruments — because in a fast-moving field those verifiable institutional facts are the durable record on which assessments of its science can rest.