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In this deliverable we briefly summarize significant new research results and new commercial products that have been published or released on the market, since the submission of the project proposal in 28/03/2019, in the technological areas where COLLABS aims to advance the state-of-the-art (SotA thereafter). The goal of this document is to ensure that the starting point for these targeted advances is up to date. It thus contains one section for each technological area listed as a target for advance in Section 1.4.1. of the proposal which describes the project’s offerings beyond the SotA. The deliverable is organized as follows. The introductory Section 1 briefly describes the overall setting and the main problem addressed by COLLABS, its project statement and the structure of the proposed COLLABS framework, in order to provide context for the sections that follow. Sections 2–8 respectively focus on the SotA in areas of: data protection (Section 2), distributed anomaly detection and remote attestation (Section 3), physical security (Section 4), function as a service (FaaS, Section 5), secure and trusted execution environments (Section 6), encrypted traffic analysis (Section 7), and AI-enabled cybersecurity in IIoT-based collaborative manufacturing environments (Section 8). Section 9 concludes the deliverable with a summary of the impacts of the new SotA on project implementation and the outlook of its contribution. During the past year there have been many works in the domains relevant to COLLABS, notably in blockchain applications, machine- and deep-learning based anomaly detection and wireless system design, remote attestation for tackling security issues in IoT systems, implementations of secure multiparty computation (SMC) and homomorphic encryption (HE), platforms providing trusted execution environments (TEEs), encrypted network traffic analysis for various purposes, and (distributed) machine learning in different levels of cybersecurity for IIoT systems. These works, overviewed in this document, provide a strong foundation for COLLABS project implementation without jeopardizing its goals with relation to SotA advancements.

Power induced wave collapse is one of the most fascinating phenomena in optics as it provides extremely high intensities, thus stimulating a range of nonlinear processes. For low power levels, propagation of beams in bulk media is dominated by diffraction, while above a certain threshold self-focusing is steadily enhanced by the action of a positive nonlinearity. An autocatalytic blow-up occurs, which is only stopped by saturation of the nonlinearity, material damage or the inherent medium discreteness. In the latter case, this leads to energy localization on a single site. It is commonly believed that for cubic nonlinearities, this intriguing effect requires at least two transverse dimensions to occur and is thus out of reach in fiber optics. Following the concept of synthetic dimensions, we demonstrate that mixing short and long-range interaction resembles a two-dimensional mesh lattice and features wave collapse at mW-power levels in a genuine 1D system formed by coupled fiber loops.

The non-Hermitian Aubry-André-Harper model exhibits a non-Hermitian phase transition that coincides with a localization transition. We provide a high-resolution measurement of the Butterfly spectrum and propose experiments to measure those transitions, using a photonic lattice.

Hydrodynamic phenomena can be observed with light thanks to the analogy between quantum gases and nonlinear optics. In this Letter, we report an experimental study of the superfluid-like properties of light in a (1+1)-dimensional nonlinear optical mesh lattice, where the arrival time of optical pulses plays the role of a synthetic spatial dimension. A spatially narrow defect at rest is used to excite sound waves in the fluid of light and measure the sound speed. The critical velocity for superfluidity is probed by looking at the threshold in the deposited energy by a moving defect, above which the apparent superfluid behaviour breaks down. Our observations establish optical mesh lattices as a promising platform to study fluids of light in novel regimes of interdisciplinary interest, including non-Hermitian and/or topological physics.

Digitalisierung bezeichnet die zunehmende Erstellung oder Umwandlung, Speicherung und Verbreitung von symbolisch codiertem Sinn – mithin Text im weitesten Sinne – in binarem Code. Dies erfolgt mittels digitaler Medientechnologien, also Computern mit Programmen und Anwendungen, zeit-, orts- und personenunabhangig. Dabei werden Informationen qua Vernetzung zugleich zentralisiert wie dezentralisiert und unter Einsatz digitaler Kommunikationstechnologien, also Diensten und Internet, gespeichert.

We study both theoretically and experimentally the existence and stability of symmetry-protected topological chiral edge states in an all-photonic system mimicking Floquet dynamics of a discrete one-dimensional quantum walk in the presence of Kerr nonlinearity. The system is realized via time multiplexing as two fiber loops of slightly different lengths with a dynamically variable coupling strength. We prove that topological edge states persist in the nonlinear regime for moderate intensities, despite chiral symmetry breaking. Above a certain power threshold, they undergo destabilization, resulting in the radiation into the bulk modes. Finally, we show that the nonlinear interaction with bulk modes can serve as an effective pumping of the topological edge states.

Thin film samples of Ge9SnSb2Te9Se4, Ge4.5SnSb2Te4.5Se4, Ge2.5SnSb2Te2.5Se4, and GeSnSb2TeSe4 were prepared via co-sputtering of GeTe and SnSb2Se4 and compared to the well-investigated phase change material GeTe. All samples were obtained in an amorphous state. Temperature-dependent in situ X-ray diffraction experiments reveal a crystallization temperature that increases with an increasing SnSb2Se4 content, leading to a higher stability of the amorphous phase. The electrical contrast between the amorphous and metastable crystalline state investigated via the van der Pauw method is as large as 4 orders of magnitude up to a 4.5:1 GeTe:SnSb2Se4 ratio. Increasing the SnSb2Se4 content leads to a decrease in the electrical contrast. Investigations of the samples by applying Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and variable incident angle spectroscopic ellipsometry show that the optical properties of the amorphous phase are not affected by changes in stoichiometry. In striking contrast, the impact of SnSb2Se4...

In einem fruheren Beitrag in dieser Zeitschrift wurde das Zusammenwirken der EU-Wasserrahmenrichtlinie mit dem europaischen Chemikalienrecht, REACH-Verordnung und CLP-Verordnung, im Hinblick auf Masnahmen zur Reduktion des Eintrags von anthropogenen Spurenstoffen in die aquatische Umwelt beschrieben. Speziell wurde auch das Informationspotenzial der auf Grundlage der chemikalienrechtlichen Verpflichtungen gesammelten Daten fur die wasserwirtschaftliche Planung angesprochen. Dieses Thema wurde zwischenzeitlich in einer spezifischen Studie im Auftrag des Bundesministeriums fur Land- und Forstwirtschaft, Umwelt und Wasserwirtschaft diskutiert. In diesem Beitrag werden die Ergebnisse dieses Projektes beschrieben. Insbesondere wird auf die Empfehlungen des Projektes fur die Datennutzung zur Identifikation abwasserrelevanter Stoffe, zur Ermittlung der Exposition sowie hinsichtlich der Bewertung der Umweltauswirkungen bei der Einleitung industrieller Abwasser eingegangen.

Geometrical properties of energy bands underlie fascinating phenomena in a wide-range of systems, including solid-state materials, ultracold gases and photonics. Most famously, local geometrical characteristics like the Berry curvature can be related to global topological invariants such as those classifying quantum Hall states or topological insulators. Regardless of the band topology, however, any non-zero Berry curvature can have important consequences, such as in the semi-classical evolution of a wave packet. Here, we experimentally demonstrate for the first time that wave packet dynamics can be used to directly map out the Berry curvature. To this end, we use optical pulses in two coupled fibre loops to study the discrete time-evolution of a wave packet in a 1D geometrical "charge" pump, where the Berry curvature leads to an anomalous displacement of the wave packet under pumping. This is both the first direct observation of Berry curvature effects in an optical system, and, more generally, the proof-of-principle demonstration that semi-classical dynamics can serve as a high-resolution tool for mapping out geometrical properties.

Under the Austrian EU presidency, the Austrian Ministry for Sustainability and Tourism (BMNT) organised a conference on Green Chemistry on 5th/6th November 2018 in Vienna. This article outlines key findings of the conference. The conference aimed to gather chemical as well as policy experts, stakeholders and various practitioners of green chemistry to discuss the current scientific status in this field, but also the need and opportunities for integrating the principles of green chemistry in European chemicals legislation. The event discussed perspectives how to foster and better integrate into the legal frameworks the principles of ‘Green Chemistry’, which guide the design of chemical substances, products and processes to avoid hazards and reduce resource use – thus offering potentials for industries to ensure their compliance and also for ‘Circular Economies’.