News: Research Highlights

Wed January 1, 2014

Quantum Interference Between Independent Reservoirs in Open Quantum Systems

When a quantum system interacts with multiple reservoirs, the environmental effects are usually treated in an additive manner. We showed that that assumption breaks down for non-Markovian environments that have finite memory times. Specifically, we demonstrated that quantum interferences between independent environments could qualitatively modify the dynamics of the physical system. We illustrated that effect...
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Research Highlights
Wed January 1, 2014

Buffer-gas loaded magneto-optical traps for Yb, Tm, Er, and Ho

Novel physics in areas like quantum information, cold controlled chemistry and precision measurements is predicted to be accessible with molecules at temperatures in the mK regime. These approaches require molecular beam sources which are unavailable at present. In particular, providing cold, slow and bright beams of a general set of molecules, ideally independent of their...
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News type:
Research Highlights
Wed January 1, 2014

Vibrational quenching of the electronic ground state in ThO in cold collisions with 3He

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News type:
Research Highlights
Wed January 1, 2014

Magnetic Trapping of Molecules via Optical Loading and Magnetic Slowing

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News type:
Research Highlights
Wed January 1, 2014

Quantum Nanophotonic Phase Switch with a Single Atom

In analogy to transistors in classical electronic circuits, a quantum optical switch is an important element of quantum circuits and quantum networks. Operated at the fundamental limit where a single quantum of light or matter controls another field or material system, it may enable fascinating applications such as long-distance quantum communication, distributed quantum information processing and...
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Research Highlights
Tue January 1, 2013

Pauli Paramagnetism of an Ideal Fermi Gas

Using the two lowest hyperfine states of a non-interacting ultracold Fermi gas of 6Li as pseudospin states, we have measured the magnetic susceptibility of such a system as a demonstration of the textbook physics of Pauli paramagnetism [1]. An imbalanced spin mixture of 6Li is trapped in the harmonic confinement potential at the focus of...
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News type:
Research Highlights
Tue January 1, 2013

Coherence and Raman Sideband Cooling of a Single Atom in an Optical Tweezer

We investigated quantum control of a single atom in a tightly focused optical tweezer trap. We showed that inevitable spatially varying polarization gave rise to significant internal-state decoherence but that the effect could be mitigated by an appropriately chosen magnetic bias field. That enabled Raman sideband cooling of a single atom close to its three-dimensional...
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News type:
Research Highlights
Tue January 1, 2013

Targeted Delivery of Nanodiamonds into Living Cells

Techniques developed in AMO physics has long served as foundations for various imaging modalities in chemistry and biology. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is one such example: through the mapping of proton nuclear spin resonances under the magnetic field gradient, MRI enables both structural and functional imaging of our bodies in an unprecedented detail. Magnetometry using...
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Research Highlights
Tue January 1, 2013

Timekeeping with Electronic Spin States in Diamond

Frequency standards based on atomic states, such as Rb or Cs vapors, or single-trapped ions, are the most precise measures of time. We proposed and analyzed a precision oscillator approach based upon spins in a solid-state system, in particular, the nitrogen-vacancy defect in single-crystal diamond. We showed that that system could have stability that approached...
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Research Highlights
Tue January 1, 2013

Coupling of NV Centers to Photonic Crystal Nanobeams in Diamond

The realization of efficient optical interfaces for solid-state atom-like systems is an important problem in quantum science with potential applications in quantum communications and quantum information processing. We described and demonstrated a technique for coupling single nitrogen vacancy (NV) centers to suspended diamond photonic crystal cavities with quality factors up to 6000. Specifically, we presented...
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News type:
Research Highlights