News: Research Highlights

Wed October 17, 2018

Improved Measurement of the Electron’s Electric Dipole Moment

Although the Standard Model of particle physics, one of the triumphs of modern physics, accurately describes all particle physics measurements made in laboratories so far, it is unable to answer many questions that arise from cosmological observations, such as the long-standing puzzle of why matter dominates over antimatter throughout the observable universe. To explain these...
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Tue September 25, 2018

Honing quantum sensing

PhD student David Layden in the Quantum Engineering Group has a new approach to spatial noise filtering that boosts development of ultra-sensitive quantum sensors. New research from MIT’s interdisciplinary Quantum Engineering Group (QEG) is addressing one of the fundamental challenges facing these quantum sensor systems: removing environmental noise from the signal being measured. “The usual...
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Sat September 1, 2018

Laser-cooling and Optical Trapping of Diatomic Molecules

Ultracold molecules have been proposed as a rich resource for many applications ranging from precision measurements and quantum metrology to quantum simulation and quantum information processing. The benefits of molecules in all these applications arise from the many internal degrees of freedom in a molecule. For example, even with the simplest two-atom diatomic molecules, one...
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Thu June 14, 2018

Quantum state engineering of a Hubbard system with ultracold fermions

Accessing new regimes in quantum simulation requires the development of new techniques for quantum state preparation. We demonstrate the quantum state engineering of a strongly correlated many-body state of the two-component repulsive Fermi-Hubbard model on a square lattice. Our scheme makes use of an ultralow entropy doublon band insulator created through entropy redistribution. After isolating...
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Fri May 25, 2018

Single Molecule Results from the Ni Labs

Molecules are intrinsic coherent quantum system that have long been recognized as promising building blocks for quantum simulations, ideal natural laboratory to search for new physics, and a playground to answer fundamental questions in chemical reactions. Achieving full quantum control of molecules in bulk gases have been a forefront goal of the field that generally...
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Thu March 8, 2018

Scientists gain new visibility into quantum information transfer

Advance holds promise for “wiring” of quantum computers and other systems, and opens new avenues for understanding basic workings of the quantum realm.

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Thu February 22, 2018

Triatomic Molecules

In the simplest molecues, diatomic molecules made form two atoms, the vibration and rotation degrees of freedom gives rise to new features such as strong long-range dipolar interactions between molecules, a key ingredient in many quantum simulation and quantum computing proposals. Polyatomic molecules are an exciting new research frontier, as these molecules offer an even...
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Tue January 30, 2018

Atomically Thin Mirrors Made from a Monolayer Semiconductor

Conventional mirrors have fundamental thickness limitations: the skin depth for metallic mirrors, and the wavelength of light for dielectric mirrors. Recently, the Park Group has demonstrated that these limitations can be overcome with the atomically thin semiconductor molybdenum diselenide [1]. To understand how this can be achieved, one has to consider how light is reflected...
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Thu August 10, 2017

Ultracold molecules hold promise for quantum computing

Researchers have taken an important step toward the long-sought goal of a quantum computer, which in theory should be capable of vastly faster computations than conventional computers, for certain kinds of problems. The new work shows that collections of ultracold molecules can retain the information stored in them, for hundreds of times longer than researchers have previously achieved in these materials.