Want to work safely and confidently with lasers?  We've got you covered. Join us for an engaging and informative in-person Laser Safety Training session led by none other than Josh Hadler, NIST's Laser Safety Officer.

Mark your calendars for Tuesday, July 22nd, from 9:00am to 12:00pm in the JILA Auditorium. This is a fantastic opportunity to learn best practices and ensure your safety while working with lasers.  Whether you're a seasoned pro or just starting out, this course is invaluable.

This training is required for anyone working with lasers, but even if you've taken it before, consider this a valuable refresher. Josh will be on hand to share his expertise and will even have a variety of laser safety goggles for you to try on. This hands-on experience will help you find the perfect fit for your needs.

No need to pre-register - just show up and sign the attendance sheet when you arrive. I will take care of adding the training credit in SciShield for you. It's that easy!

Abstract: Neutral atoms offer great opportunities to study fundamental science and have become a key resource for quantum technologies. In this talk, I will first discuss several architectural aspects of fault-tolerant neutral-atom quantum computers, from the realization of universal gate sets in transversal operations to executing algorithms with constant physical entropy. One limitation is atom loss occurring during entanglement gate operations and qubit readout, which can be solved by continuously loading new atoms into the quantum computer. In this context, we recently demonstrated an experimental architecture for high-rate, continuous reloading and operation of a large-scale atom array system while realizing coherent storage and manipulation of quantum information. Since atom loss rates depend on the number of applied operations, the scale of future quantum computers will depend on the reloading rate. Demonstrating a rate of 300,000 atoms in tweezers per second, we create over 30,000 initialized qubits per second, which we leverage to assemble and maintain an array of over 3,000 atoms for more than two hours. At the end of the talk, I will slightly switch the direction and discuss several aspects of long-range interacting Rydberg atoms. First I will discuss how these interactions can be used to engineer many-body systems, where I will focus on the recent realization of a doped t-J model. Finally, I will discuss molecular states occurring at shorter distances, which provide a great testbed for our calculations of Rydberg interactions and furthermore enable studying signatures of molecular quantum states at exceptional levels of control.

Planetary magnetospheres provide natural laboratories for the study of space plasmas, and Jupiter’s magnetosphere in particular acts as a bridge between those phenomena we can study in detail at Earth, and those beyond the solar system that we can only glimpse through telescopes. Jupiter’s auroras have been studied for many years with increasing sensitivity and resolution, but the James Webb Space Telescope offers a revolutionary perspective of these spectacular emissions. We present Webb observations of Jupiter’s infrared auroral H3+ emission, exhibiting variability on timescales down to seconds. Together with simultaneous Hubble Space Telescope ultraviolet observations, these results imply an auroral H3+ lifetime of 150s, and that H3+ cannot efficiently radiate heat deposited by bursty auroral pre- cipitation.However,H3+ radiation is particularly efficient in a dusk active region, which has no significant ultraviolet counterpart. The cause of such emission is unclear. We also present observations of rapid eastward-travelling auroral pulses in the dawn side auroral region and pulsations that propagate rapidly along the Io footprint tail. Together, these observations open a diagnostic window for the jovian magnetosphere and ionosphere.  We also preview a new Jovian hybrid Monte-Carlo auroral ionosphere code and some results arising therefrom; e.g. dependence of Pedersen conductance and UV intensities on field-aligned current using realistic precipitating electron energy spectra.

Abstract: The evolution of plasma environments is defined and governed by balances between ionizing processes, chemical rearrangements, and neutralisation reactions such as mutual neutralisation (MN). Measuring and explaining these processes in detail is fundamental to understanding and modelling non-local thermal equilibrium environments, such as atmospheric plasmas.

Until recently, experimental studies of MN involving molecular ions in flow tubes and merged-beams were limited to measurements of overall reactivities without information of the mechanism or the products. The cryogenic Double ElectroStatic Ion Ring ExpEriment facility makes such studies possible.

Here, it is possible to control and manipulate the internal energies of the ions, fine-tuned their collision energy, and identify the reaction products and the states they are in. This opens possibilities to reach new insights on balances between different MN reaction pathways and their dynamics, and here I focus on MN relevant to atmospheric phenomenon such as sprites: investigating reactions involving molecular oxygen and nitrogen ions, I probe competition between product channels and unravel effects of internal energy in the molecular ion on the reaction.

There is a long-standing history of instrument makers grilling bratwursts for the whole building every summer. We will be continuing the tradition outside by the tower Thursday July 31st at noon. Remember to pack your appetites and join us in the great American pastime of eating hot dogs until we all feel ill!

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Abstract: Galaxies are intimately connected to the environments they live in. The haloes around them contain the gas reservoir from which the galaxies grow, while galactic outflows heat and enrich this circumgalactic medium (CGM). The elemental abundances of present-day stars are, in part, set by these cosmic gas flows. Using zoom-in cosmological simulations of galaxies, I will discuss the physical and observable properties of gas and stars in and around galaxies. The multiphase nature of the CGM is affected by the resolution of our simulations, which enhances the amount of cool, neutral gas in the halo, bringing them more in line with observations. I will show how the properties of the CGM depend on the presence of magnetic fields and on feedback from relativistic cosmic rays. This affects the distribution of metals and observational properties of the halo gas. Our simulations also follow the distribution of rare elements beyond the iron peak, produced by rapid neutron capture and, time permitting, I will discuss whether or not neutron star mergers could be the main source of these heavy elements by comparing our results to observed stellar abundances.

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Abstract: In the last several years, the combination of resolved event horizon scale images and large-scale computational models has led to new insights into black hole accretion. The main implication is that magnetic fields near the event horizon can become dynamically important, and I'll show that such a scenario provides a natural explanation for the high energy flares from our Galactic center black hole. I’ll then discuss our efforts to extend beyond the two objects with resolved images and calculate theoretical predictions for more luminous systems, focusing on the maximum luminosity of a hot accretion flow and the physical origin of the X-ray corona.