This year's winner of the Group for Precision Measurement and Fundamental Constants (GPMFC) Student Poster Prize is JILA student William Milner. Milner's poster prize was won at DAMOP, which is a part of the American Physics Society (APS) and stands for Division of Atomic, Molecular & Optical Physics.
According to Milner: "Our work in the Ye lab is focused on developing next generation optical clocks. Pushing the state-of-the-art requires interrogating as many atoms as possible, thus understanding and controlling interactions at high atomic densities becomes increasingly important. This motivated our group to develop a three-dimensional optical lattice clock based on a degenerate Fermi gas. This experiment takes advantage of the high, correlated density of a degenerate Fermi gas to guard against on-site interaction shifts.
Our poster summarizes new ways to advance this system and achieve the longest atomic coherence times possible. To minimize decoherence, we propose new strategies including loading a low-entropy, nuclear spin-polarized Fermi gas into the lattice to minimize motional dephasing. To prepare and image this state with high fidelity, a new set of experimental tools were developed. More broadly, our clock platform provides a window to study new physics ranging from variations of fundamental constants to novel atom-light interactions." Congratulations William Milner!