Recent advances in the control and manipulation of single or few microscopic degrees of freedom, such as single atoms and photons, are at the basis of a second quantum revolution. After the first, related to the transistor and nuclear power, the second sees the use of quantum correlations to overcome the classical efficiency in techniques to manipulate information.

Of fundamental importance for achieving the desired "quantum advantages" in areas such as computation, communication, cryptography and metrology, is the ability to identify, control, mitigate and exploit the effects of dissipation and noise typical of the physical platforms used.