Lab Members

Ana Maria Rey

My research interests are in the scientific interface between atomic, molecular and optical physics, condensed matter physics and quantum information science. Specifically, on ways of developing new techniques for controlling quantum systems and then using them in various applications ranging from quantum simulations/information to time and frequency standards. My group wants to engineer fully controllable quantum systems capable to mimic desired real materials as well as to develop advanced and novel measurement techniques capable of probing atomic quantum systems at the fundamental level.

Education

University of Maryland

College Park, Maryland, USA
Ph.D., Physics
August 2004
Dissertation Title: "Ultracold bosonic atoms in optical lattices"
Advisors: Charles W. Clark and Theodore R. Kirkpatrick

Universidad de los Andes

Bogota, Colombia
B.S., Physics
March 1999
Dissertation Title: "Propagation of electromagnetic radiation in Kerr's metric"
Advisors: Rafael Bautista

Academic Experience

Fellow of JILA
January 2012–Present
Associate Fellow of JILA
August 2008–January 2012

Adjoint Professor, Department of Physics, University of Colorado Boulder
September 2017­–Present
Associate Research Professor
January 2013–August 2017
Assistant Research Professor
August 2008–January 2013

Institute of Theoretical Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics (ITAMP)
At the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
Postdoctoral fellow
September, 2005 - 2008

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
Gaithersburg, Maryland, USA.
Postdoctoral researcher
September 2004 - September 2005

University of Maryland
College Park, Maryland, USA.
Research Assistant
September 2000 - September 2004

Diego Barberena

I received my B.Sc. in physics at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú in 2013 and received a M.Sc. degree in quantum optics at the same place in 2016. I enrolled in the Ph.D. program at the University of Colorado Boulder in 2017 and joined Professor’s Rey group at the end of the same year.

My interests encompass quantum technologies and their implementations in AMO and condensed matter systems, as well as the more theoretical aspects of these subjects.  I am generally excited both by the possibilities offered by systems of cold atoms to simulate various complex phenomena and by the theoretical understanding of these phenomena themselves. I am currently studying collective coherent interactions of many atoms with a cavity.

Dr. Miskeen Khan

I obtained my M.Phil (Electronics) at Quaid-i-Azam university, Pakistan. I further obtained my PhD (Physics) degree under the supervisions of Prof. José Tito Mendonça and Dr. Hugo Tercas in 2021 at Instituto Superior Técnico, university of Lisbon, Portugal. I also worked as a visiting PhD student in the group of Prof. Maciej Lewenstein at ICFO-The Institute of Photonic Sciences, Spain.

During my PhD, I worked on theoretical modelling of various hybrid quantum devices that are mainly composed of the mechanical degrees of freedom. As such, I addressed the open system dynamics and the control of phonons while these are coupled to other quantum systems such as, light, atomic spin systems, and quasi-particle excitations.

Since October 2021, I joined Rey's group as a postdoctoral fellow. I am interested in the development of novel quantum devices that contribute in the developments of quantum technologies.

Dr. Tianrui Xu

Dr. Jeremy Young

I received my B.S. in physics and in mathematics from the University of Rochester in 2013 and my Ph.D. in physics at the University of Maryland, College Park in 2019. I joined Professor Rey's group as an NRC postdoc in 2020. 

My research has focused on understanding non-equilibrium dynamics in open quantum systems and using Rydberg atoms for quantum computation and simulation. Some highlights of this research include the identification of new forms of non-equilibrium critical behavior at driven-dissipative phase transitions and the development of a new approach to engineering multi-qubit Rydberg gates by using strong microwave dressing.

Sanaa Agarwal

I graduated from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani (BITS Pilani) in Rajasthan, India with a double-major in Physics and Mechanical Engineering in 2019. I joined CU Boulder as a graduate student in 2019 and joined Prof. Rey's group in the summer of 2020. I am currently working towards understanding the effects of dipole-dipole interactions in multi-level atoms and drawing comparisons with the widely-studied case of two-level atoms in optical lattices. The understanding of light-matter interactions in these systems is pertinent to experiments involving alkaline-earth atoms with hyperfine levels and a degenerate ground-state manifold. 

Anjun Chu

I obtained my B.Sc. in physics at Tsinghua University in 2018, and subsequently became a Ph.D. student in the Rey Theory Group at the University of Colorado Boulder. My research interests are mainly in the realization and characterization of exotic quantum many-body phenomena in highly controllable ultracold atomic systems. I'm currently focusing on the non-equilibrium dynamics in quantum spin model based on trapped bosonic gas platform and photon-mediated interactions of alkaline earth atoms in optical cavity.

Kris Tucker