International Day of Light 2025 on May 16th

For updates on the event, see the MPL website.

Part 1: City Center Erlangen | Hugenottenplatz

Science tent at Hugo – 12.00 to 16.00

run by scientists from MPL and the Zukunftsmuseum 

• Dancing with Photons: Quantum Transitions in Action
• Smaller than a millionth of a millimetre – how can you make that visible?
• Single ion you can touch
• How much tea is in your iced tea? The photometer will tell you
• “Out of the box” – Experience linearly polarized light
• Who’s who: Telescope and microscope

Find out and perform some experiments yourself together with our scientists from the MPL and the Zukunftsmuseum.

Science to go: open-air impulse lectures

just 10 minutes to learn more about quantum science

12.00 / 12.30 Making the world a little more safer with quantum keys
Prof. Christoph Marquardt

13.00 / 13.30 Conquering artificial intelligence through quantum physics
Prof. Florian Marquardt

14.00 / 14.30 Capturing and storing light
Dr. Pascal Del’Haye

15.00 Quantum of Sound – what sound has to do with quanta and neural networks
Prof. Birgit Stiller

Part 2: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light | Staudtstrasse 2 91058 Erlangen

MPL opens its doors – 17.00 to 19.00

see where the knowledge of tomorrow is born – at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light
Lectures
17.00 100 Years of Quantum Science (Prof. Florian Marquardt)

17.40 Quantum Optoacoustics – how sound controls optical quantum and classical information (Prof. Birgit Stiller)

Laboratory Tours
18:00 / 18:30

Movie Tracing Light

Location

Part 1: Science in the City, Hugenottenplatz, 91054 Erlangen

Part 2: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light, Leuchs-Russell Auditorium, A.1.500, Staudtstr. 2, 91058 Erlangen