News

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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Wed January 1, 2014

Time-resolved magnetic sensing with electronic spins in diamond

One of the most promising applications of quantum information is in precision metrology. In the past year we focused on magnetic sensing with NV centers in diamond, in particular focusing on techniques to extend magnetic field sensing at the nano-scale to time-dependent reconstruction of magnetic fields and spectroscopy.
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Wed January 1, 2014

Many-body Dynamics of Dipolar Molecules in an Optical Lattice

Understanding the many-body dynamics of isolated quantum systems is one of the central challenges in modern physics. To this end, the direct experimental realization of strongly correlated quantum systems allows one to gain insights into the emergence of complex phenomena. Such insights enable the development of theoretical tools that broaden our understanding. In our study,...
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Wed January 1, 2014

Properties of the ground 3F2 state and the excited 3P0 state of atomic thorium in cold collisions with 3He

We measure inelastic collisional cross sections for collisions between thorium (Th) and helium. We determine for Th 3F2-He the ratio of the momentum-transfer to Zeeman relaxation cross sections for collisions to be g~500 at 800 mK. For Th 3P0-He collisions, we observe no measureable quenching of this metastable state, even after 106 collisions. This allowed...
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Wed January 1, 2014

Interferometric Probes of Many-body Localization

We proposed a method for detecting many-body localization (MBL) in disordered spin systems. The method involved pulsed, coherent spin manipulations that probed the dephasing of a given spin due to its entanglement with a set of distant spins. It allowed one to distinguish the MBL phase from a non-interacting localized phase and a delocalized phase....
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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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Mon November 4, 2013

Professor Daniel Kleppner, 2014 Franklin Institute Laureate

A research collaboration including CUA investigators at Harvard.
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Tue October 15, 2013

Symposium Honoring Professor Daniel Kleppner

This meeting will celebrate Professor Daniel Kleppner’s career of fundamental contributions in physics. An outstanding list of invited speakers will present the most recent and interesting topics in atomic physics.
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