Past Events

Building the Quantum Microscopes of the Future: From Star Wars to Quantum Sculpting

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Abstract: For decades, scientists have pursued a bold goal: creating a laser that works not just with visible light but with powerful X-rays. Conventional X-ray sources, essential in medicine, security, and technology, are based on principles dating back to Röntgen’s discovery in 1895, essentially a brighter, more advanced X-ray light bulb. But just as lasers revolutionized the way we harness visible light, an X-ray laser would unlock extraordinary new capabilities in science and technology. The challenge?

Breathomics by Cavity-enhanced Comb Spectroscopy

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Abstract: Breathomics aims to address the current unmet clinical needs by utilizing exhaled breath contents for non-invasive and real-time medical diagnostics. We demonstrate a frequency comb breathalyzer powered by machine learning for detecting COVID-19, finding 85 % accuracy among a 170-subject cohort. To enhance diagnostic power, we introduce Modulated Ringdown Comb Interferometry, a new technique enabling the quantification of “odor” of arbitrarily complex and unknown contents at new record sensing performance and requiring only simple instruments.

High-Repetition-Rate Fermionic Quantum Gas Microscope for Quantum Simulation

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Fermionic quantum simulators provide a powerful platform for exploring high-temperature superconductivity, topological phases, and many-body dynamics—challenges that persist even with the advent of qubit-based quantum computing. In this talk, I will present recent results from our high-repetition-rate fermionic quantum gas microscope, which is optimized for rapid data acquisition. Fast cycle times on the order of a few seconds are achieved through high-power optical traps, rapid evaporative cooling, and efficient spin-resolved fluorescence imaging.

Unraveling the quantum secrets of black holes

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Abstract:  Black holes are often portrayed as cosmic vacuum cleaners that swallow everything, even light. In reality, they are far richer and more revealing: each black hole is a natural laboratory where the two great pillars of modern physics — Einstein’s general relativity and quantum mechanics — meet head-on. In this talk, we will venture from the known, the black holes that we can observe in our sky, into the unknown, where we begin to understand how black holes obey the rules of quantum mechanics.

A compact dual-species setup towards ultracold fermionic 6Li87Rb molecules

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Ultracold polar molecules possess inherent strong electric dipole moments and a rich internal structure, making them ideal platforms for implementing novel quantum information schemes, performing precision quantum metrology, and exploring exotic quantum phases such as dipolar BEC-BCS crossover in molecular Fermi gases. However, such experiments require extensive control over two or more species of atoms and their interactions, significantly scaling up the complexity and construction period of the experiment setup.

Graduate Student Seminar Series

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The JILA Association of Graduate Students (JAGS) is excited to announce the next session of the JILA Graduate Student Seminar Series! Please join us next Thursday, June 5th, at 12:30 in the JILA Auditorium, with the talks beginning at 12:45.

The talks for this session are:

Student voice in quantum education - Kristin Oliver, Lewandowski PER Group

Engineering Collective Decoherence-Free Subspaces - Lyryl Vaecairn, Holland Group

Please come by and explore the research going on at JILA! There will also be lunch provided.

Broad-Spectrum Photonics from Visible to Infrared: Multiscale, Multiphysics Challenges and Active Nanophotonic Devices

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In this talk, Shinho Kim will discuss photonic systems studied across distinct spectral regimes, from the visible to the mid-infrared. His work addresses multiscale and multiphysics challenges in light–matter interactions, with each spectral regime involving fundamentally different mechanisms and applications.

Realizing spin squeezing on an optical-clock transition with Rydberg dressing and assembling a Bose-Hubbard superfluid with tweezer-controlled atoms

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Neutral-atom arrays with single-particle detection and control are a powerful tool for quantum science. In this defense, I present results from two projects, both performed with the same tweezer-programmable neutral-strontium-array apparatus. First, we engineer Rydberg interactions to create entangled spin-squeezed states, whose measurement noise can outperform classical limits. In a synchronous optical-frequency comparison between two spin-squeezed ensembles of atoms, we realize a measurement with a stability better than the standard quantum limit.