Dr. Takis Kontos

Physicist, Research director at CNRS

Leader of the “Hybrid Quantum Circuits team” at ENS - Paris

Scientific board and co-founder of C12 Quantum Electronics (startup)

Research topics:  

Quantum Electrodynamics with hybrid nanocircuits

Superconducting and ferromagnetic proximity effects

Nanospintronics with carbon nanotubes

Quantum sensing

Laboratoire de Physique de l’Ecole Normale Supérieure

ENS, France

E-mail: takis[dot]kontos[at]ens[dot]fr

and Laboratoire de Physique et d’Etude des Matériaux, ESPCI, France

E-mail: takis[dot]kontos[at]espci[dot]fr

Selected grants

- ERC starting grant 2012 “Circuit QED with hybrid electronics states”

- ERC “proof of concept” 2019 ”QUBE” (QUantum technology based on carBon nanotubEs)

- ERC Synergy 2023 “Dark Quantum” (Quantum Technologies for Axion Dark Matter Search) with Igor Irastorza Igor (Universidad de Zaragoza) , Sorin Paraoanu (Aalto University) and Wernsdorfer Wolfgang (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology)

Alumni

PhD Students:

Thomas Delattre (2006-2009), now Head of Innovation and Datalab Department at SOLENT SAS

Chéryl Feuillet-Palma (2006-2010), now Associate Professor at the ESPCI, Paris

Lorenz G. Herrmann (2007-2010), now Member of Directorate and Head of Department "Advanced Materials and Surfaces"at EMPA, Switzerland

Matthieu R. Delbecq (2009-2012), now Assistant Professor at the Ecole Normal Supérieure, Paris

Dora A. Crisan (2010-2013), now Digital Product Developer

Jérémie J. Viennot (2010-2014), now Permanent Researcher at Institut Néel, Grenoble, France

Matthieu Baillergeau (2012-2015), now Research Engineer at Saint Gobain, France

Laure E. Bruhat (2013-2016), Prix Saint-Gobain 2016 of the French Physics Society (SFP)

Matthieu M. Desjardins (2013-2016), Co-funder at CTO at C12 Quantum Electronics

Matthieu C. Dartiailh (2014-2017), now Quantum Engineer at Quo, Grenoble, France

Tino Cubaynes (2015-2018), now Postdoctoral Researcher at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany

Lauriane C. Contamin (2016-2019), now Engineer at InjectPower, Grenoble, France

Arnaud Théry (2021-2024), Postdoctoral Reseacher at Max Planck Institute, Halle, Germany

Benoit Neukelmance (2020-2024), Quantum Engineer at C12 Quantum Electronics

Benjamin Hue (2023-)

Chloé Fruy (2024-)

Jeanne Bally (2025-)

Post-docs:

Subhadeep Datta (2011-2013), Assistant Professor at the School of Physical Sciences, Calcutta, India

Federico Valmorra (2016-2019), Project Leader at Attocube Systems AG, Munchen, Germany.

William Legrand, (2019-2022) now permanent researcher at Institut Néel, Grenoble, France.

Selected publications

- Villiers, Smith, Petrescu, Borgognoni, Delbecq, Sarlette, Mirrahimi, Campagne-Ibarcq, Kontos, Leghtas

Dynamically Enhancing Qubit-Photon Interactions with Antisqueezing,

PRX Quantum 5, 020306 (2024).

- Jeon, Hazra, Kim, Jeon, Han, Meyerheim, Kontos, Cottet, Parkin

Chiral antiferromagnetic Josephson junctions as spin-triplet supercurrent spin valves and dc SQUIDs

Nature Nanotechnology 18, 747 (2023).

- Contamin, Jarjat, Legrand, Cottet, Kontos, Delbecq

Zero energy states clustering in an elemental nanowire coupled to a superconductor

Nature Communications 13, 6188 (2022).

- Valmorra, Yoshida, Contamin, Messelot, Massabeau, Delbecq, Dartiailh, Desjardins, Cubaynes, Leghtas,

Hirakawa, Tignon, Dhillon, Balibar, Mangeney, Cottet, Kontos

Vacuum-field-induced THz transport gap in a carbon nanotube quantum dot

Nature Communications 12, 5490 (2021).

- Desjardins, Contamin, Delbecq, Dartiailh, Bruhat, Cubaynes, Viennot, Mallet, Rohart, Thiaville, Cottet, Kontos

Synthetic spin orbit interaction for Majorana devices

Nature Materials 18, 1060 (2019)

- Desjardins, Viennot, Dartiailh, Bruhat, Delbecq, Lee, Choi, Cottet & Kontos

Observation of the frozen charge of a Kondo resonance, Nature 545, 71 (2017)

- Viennot, Dartiailh, Cottet, & Kontos

Coherent coupling of a single spin to microwave cavity photons, Science 349, 6246 (2015).

- Delbecq, Schmitt, Parmentier, Roch, Viennot, Fève, Huard, Mora, Cottet, & Kontos

Coupling a Quantum Dot, Fermionic Leads, and a Microwave Cavity on a Chip, Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 256804 (2011).

- Herrmann, Portier, Roche, Yeyati, Kontos, Strunk

Carbon nanotubes as Cooper-pair beam splitters, Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 026801 (2010).

- Sahoo, Kontos, Furer, Hoffmann, Graber, Cottet & Schönenberger

Electric field control of spin transport, Nature Phys. 1, 99 (2005).

- Kontos, Aprili, Lesueur, and Grison

Inhomogeneous Superconductivity Induced in a Ferromagnet by Proximity Effect, Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 304 (2001)

Full publication list on: ArXiv, Google Scholar

Videos

- “Quantum full split”, a 5 minutes pedagogical video on Entanglement and Cooper Pair splitting, realized by O·H·N·K

- “Nanoelectronique quantique”, seminar given in Paris, March 2018, for high school physics teachers (in french)

- “Mesoscopic quantum electrodynamics”: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, pedagogical lecture given in Bangalore, India, August 2017

Takis Kontos working with Lauriane Contamin on the wiring of a dilution refrigerator, Photo by Hubert Raguet