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JILA postdoctoral researcher and Swiss National Science Foundation Postdoc.Mobility Fellow Konstantin Herb, a member of JILA and NIST Fellow Jun Ye’s research group, has received two major awards for his doctoral research at ETH Zurich: the 2026

Physics alumnus Alexander Aeppli (PhDPhys’25) is the recipient of this year’s Deborah Jin Award for Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Research, a national honor awarded by the Division of Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics (DAMOP) of the American Physical Society. Aeppli received the award at the annual DAMOP meeting held June 1-5, 2026, in Providence, Rhode Island.

JILA Fellow Jun Ye has been elected a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious honorary societies. His election recognizes his extraordinary contributions to physics and quantum science, including pioneering advances in optical atomic clocks, precision measurement, and quantum many-body physics.

JILA Fellow Jun Ye has been elected a corresponding member abroad of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, OeAW), recognizing his internationally influential contributions to physics and quantum science. Election to the OeAW honors scholars whose work has had a profound impact well beyond Austria and reflects exceptional standing within the global research community.

JILA researchers, working with collaborators in Germany, demonstrated that new crystalline mirror coatings dramatically reduce atomic-level noise in optical cavities, enabling lasers with record‑breaking frequency stability. By outperforming traditional coatings by a factor of four, these mirrors open the door to more precise experiments and future advances in technologies such as atomic clocks and gravitational‑wave detection.

JILA researchers have taken a major step toward realizing next‑generation nuclear clocks by studying how thorium‑doped crystals behave over time. In new experiments published in Nature, the team tracked the stability, temperature response, and reproducibility of three calcium‑fluoride crystals containing different concentrations of thorium. Over nearly a year of measurements, all three crystals demonstrated remarkably stable nuclear transition frequencies—an essential requirement for building reliable nuclear clocks.

Dr. Kai Li, a researcher in the Jun Ye Group, has been named the recipient of the 2026 European XFEL Young Scientist Award. This prestigious honor is awarded annually to an early-career scientist who has made exceptional contributions through experiments conducted at the European X-ray Free-Electron Laser (XFEL).

In a study published in Physical Review X Quantum, a team led by JILA and NIST Fellow and Â鶹Ãâ·Ñ°æÏÂÔØ physics professor Jun Ye has demonstrated—for the first time—narrow-line laser cooling of a molecule. By utilizing a previously unaddressed transition in the diatomic molecule yttrium monoxide (YO), the researchers have developed a new approach to manipulate internal states and molecular motion with unprecedented precision.

UNESCO named physicist Jun Ye to its Quantum 100 list—a catalogue of some of the top leaders around the world in the rapidly growing field of quantum science.

JILA and NIST Fellow Jun Ye has once again been recognized as one of the world’s most influential scientists. For the 12th year in a row, Ye has earned a place on the Clarivate Highly Cited Researchers list, an honor reserved for researchers whose work ranks among the top 1% of citations globally across their fields.