Ron Tenne

My research is at the crossroads of two prolific scientific fields: nano-sized particles and quantum optics. The interesting connection between the two arises from the fact that semiconducting nanoparticles naturally emit quantum states of light, such as single photons and entangled photon pairs. My newly established experimental group will explore colloidal nanoparticles, prepared in straightforward chemical reactions as quantum emitters with the prospect of using these in the future as quantum sensors – reporters of their nanometric environment that benefit from the laws of quantum mechanics.

Two scientifically fundamental challenges stand in our way to fulfilling this vision:

1. Heterogeneity: particles are slightly different from one another
2. Unresolved dynamics: the dynamics of electrons must be measured and understood on multiple timescales – from picoseconds to minutes. Special attention is required to the wanted and unwanted interactions with the environment.

To meet these challenges, our experiments are performed one particle at a time, under cryogenic temperatures and with new methods that enable us to observe dynamics on fast-to-ultrafast timescales.

Our goal is to translate our new understanding of this unique type of light source to generate new quantum states of light, explore new regimes in light-matter interaction and finally apply these particles to enrich the growing field of quantum sensing.

After receiving my BSc in Physics and Materials Engineering from the Technion in 2010, I continued for an MSc in Physics in the Weizmann Institute (Israel) in 2012 where I later also earned my PhD in Physics in 2018. My research, performed in the group of Prof. Dan Oron, was centered on improving optical microscopy by recognizing the quantum properties of light. In 2020, I moved to the University of Konstanz in southern Germany for a postdoc in the Chair of Ultrafast Phenomena headed by Prof. Alfred Leitenstorfer in which, in 2022, I became a junior group leader. In this period, my fascination turned to studying the fluctuations prevalent in the light emitted from single nanoparticles. In 2025 I join the Faculty of Chemistry and the Solid-State Institute in the Technion as an assistant professor and established the experimental research group Fast-to-Ultrafast Nano Spectroscopy, in short, funSpec.. because spectroscopy is pretty fun.

Conradt F.*, Bezold V.*, Wiechert V., Huber S., Mecking S., Leitenstorfer A., Tenne R.^†, Electric-field fluctuations as the cause of spectral instabilities in colloidal quantum dots, Nano Lett. 23, 21 (2023)

Kempf H., Sulzer P., Liehl A., Leitenstorfer A., Tenne R.^†, Few-femtosecond phase-sensitive detection of infrared electric fields with a third-order nonlinearity, Communications Physics 6, 195 (2023)

Lubin G.*, Tenne R.*, Ulku A. C., Antolovic I. M., Burri S., Karg S., Yallapragda V. J., Bruschini C., Charbon E., Oron, D., Heralded Spectroscopy Reveals Exciton–Exciton Correlations in Single Colloidal Quantum Dots, Nano. Lett., 21, 16 (2021)

Lubin, G*., Tenne, R.*, Antolovic, I.M.*, Charbon, E., Bruschini, C., Oron, D., Quantum correlation measurement with single photon avalanche diode arrays, Optics Express 27, 23 (2019)

Rossman, U., Tenne, R., Solomon, O., Kaplan-Ashiri, I., Dadosh, T., Eldar, Y., Oron, D., Rapid quantum image scanning microscopy by joint sparse reconstruction, Optica 6, 10(2019).

Tenne, R.  Rossman, U., Rephael, B., Israel, Y., Krupinski-Ptaszek A., Lapkiewicz, R., Silberberg, Y., Oron, D., Super-resolution enhancement by quantum image scanning microscopy, Nat. Photonics, 13, 116-122 (2019)

Israel, Y.*, Tenne, R.*, Oron, D. & Silberberg, Y. Quantum correlation enhanced super-resolution localization microscopy enabled by a fibre bundle camera. Nat. Commun. 8, 1 (2017)

* equal contribution

^† corresponding author