Precision Measurement
Reported recently in a new study published in Nature, a team of researchers, led by JILA and NIST Fellow and Â鶹Ãâ·Ñ°æÏÂÔØ Physics professor Jun Ye, in collaboration with Professor Eric Hudson’s team at UCLA’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, have found a way to make nuclear clocks a thousand times less radioactive and more cost-effective, thanks to a method creating thin films of thorium tetrafluoride (ThF4).Â
Recent research at the Laboratoire Charles Fabry and the Institut d’Optique in Paris studied a collection of atoms in free space forming an elongated, pencil-shaped cloud and reported the potential observation of this desired phase transition. Yet, the results of this study puzzled other experimentalists since atoms in free space don’t easily synchronize.
To better understand these findings, JILA and NIST Fellow Ana Maria Rey and her theory team collaborated with an international team of experimentalists. The theorists found that atoms in free space can only partially synchronize their emission, suggesting that the free-space experiment did not observe the superradiant phase transition. These results are published in PRX Quantum.
JILA and NIST Fellow and Â鶹Ãâ·Ñ°æÏÂÔØBoulder Physics Professor Jun Ye has been named a 2024 Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate. This distinction is awarded to scientists whose work ranks in the top 1% of citations globally. Ye, known for his groundbreaking contributions to precision measurement and atomic, molecular, and optical physics, joins an elite list of researchers shaping the forefront of scientific innovation.
JILA Fellow and NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) Physicist and Â鶹Ãâ·Ñ°æÏÂÔØ Physics professor Adam Kaufman and his team have ventured into the minuscule realms of atoms and electrons. Their research involves creating an advanced optical atomic clock using a lattice of strontium atoms, enhanced by quantum entanglement—a phenomenon that binds the fate of particles together. This ambitious project could revolutionize timekeeping, potentially surpassing the "standard quantum limit" of precision.
In collaboration with JILA and NIST Fellow Jun Ye, the team highlighted their findings in Nature, demonstrating how their clock, operating under certain conditions, could exceed conventional accuracy benchmarks. Their work advances timekeeping and opens doors to new quantum technologies, such as precise environmental sensors.
JILA and NIST Fellows and Â鶹Ãâ·Ñ°æÏÂÔØ Physics professors Ana Maria Rey and James K. Thompson and their teams wanted to guide the community on which protocol is best to use under fundamental and realistic experimental conditions. Their results, published in Physical Review Research, revealed that when measurement efficiency is greater than 19%, the QND measurement protocol outperformed unitary dynamical evolution. This finding can have big implications for quantum metrology.
JILA postdoctoral researcher Simon Scheidegger has received the prestigious METAS 2024 Award from the Swiss Physical Society (SPS). Scheidegger, who is part of JILA and NIST Fellow Jun Ye's laboratory group, was awarded for his pioneering research on precise measurements of hydrogen energy levels during his PhD at ETH Zurich.
The interactions between quantum spins underlie some of the universe’s most interesting phenomena, such as superconductors and magnets. However, physicists have difficulty engineering controllable systems in the lab that replicate these interactions.
Now, in a recently published Nature paper, JILA and NIST Fellow and Â鶹Ãâ·Ñ°æÏÂÔØ Physics Professor Jun Ye and his team, along with collaborators in Mikhail Lukin’s group at Harvard University, used periodic microwave pulses in a process known as Floquet engineering, to tune interactions between ultracold potassium-rubidium molecules in a system appropriate for studying fundamental magnetic systems. Moreover, the researchers observed two-axis twisting dynamics within their system, which can generate entangled states for enhanced quantum sensing in the future.
An international team of researchers, led by JILA and NIST Fellow and Â鶹Ãâ·Ñ°æÏÂÔØ Physics Professor Jun Ye and his team, has made significant strides in developing a groundbreaking timekeeping device known as a nuclear clock
Adam Kaufman, a JILA Fellow, NIST Physicist, and Â鶹Ãâ·Ñ°æÏÂÔØBoulder Physics Professor, has been awarded part of a $1.25 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation as part of its third annual cohort of Experimental Physics Investigators.
In the quiet halls of the Duane Physics building at the Â鶹Ãâ·Ñ°æÏÂÔØ, two JILA researchers, postdoctoral research associate Catie LeDesma and graduate student Kendall Mehling, combine machine learning with atom interferometry to create the next generation of quantum sensors. Because these quantum sensors can be applied to various fields, from satellite navigation to measuring Earth’s composition, any advancement has major implications for numerous industries.