Plenary - UPON 2026

UPON 2026 Plenary Speakers

M. Esposito

Computing at kT: A Stochastic Thermodynamics Perspective

Department of Physics and Materials Science

University of Luxembourg,

Luxembourg

As electronic devices operate increasingly close to the thermal energy scale kT, fluctuations become an intrinsic component of their dynamics rather than a perturbation. In this regime, computation must be understood as a nonequilibrium physical process.

In this talk, I will show how stochastic thermodynamics provides a consistent framework to describe nonlinear electronic circuits in the presence of noise, with a focus on subthreshold CMOS technologies. By enforcing thermodynamic consistency at the level of stochastic dynamics, this approach allows one to characterize energy exchanges, dissipation, and fluctuations in computational devices.
I will discuss how this perspective naturally leads to probabilistic computing elements that exploit thermal noise, and argue that stochastic thermodynamics offers a principled way to think about computation in energy-limited, noisy regimes.

L. Gammaitoni

The beneficial role of noise: stochastic resonance and beyond

Luca Gammaitoni

Department of Physics and Geology

University of Perugia

Perugia, Italy

The phenomenon of Stochastic Resonance has become the hallmark of a whole new wave in the discussion of stochastic nonlinear physical systems, in which the role of noise and fluctuations can have beneficial effects, if certain conditions are met. In this seminar, we will briefly review Stochastic Resonance and introduce new phenomena in which the role of noise is producing benefits far beyond what is normally expected.

G. A. Falci

Decoherence and 1/f noise in Quantum Nanoscience: Superconducting Quantum Computing Devices

Giuseppe A. Falci

Department of Physics and Astronomy “E. Majorana”, Università di Catania, Italy.
Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Catania, Italy.

In standard quantum mechanics, physical systems are often idealized as isolated entities evolving under unitary dynamics. In practice, however, unavoidable interactions with environmental degrees of freedom lead to decoherence, limiting the performance of quantum technologies. In quantum computing, decoherence manifests as errors that hinder the realization of the expected computational advantage, low-frequency noise being the major source of degradation in solid-state quantum platforms.

In this talk, I review the main approaches to addressing decoherence induced by broadband colored noise, using superconducting quantum devices as a case study. I discuss diagnostic tools for identifying decoherence mechanisms and outline the main strategies for their mitigation. Open problems—such as the detection of non-Gaussian noise features, their effects in multilevel and multi-qubit systems, and the development of a comprehensive theory of quantum 1/f noise—are also addressed.