Research Highlights

Ana Maria Rey’s group is devising new theoretical methods to help experimentalists use ultracold atoms, ions, and molecules to model quantum magnetism in solids. Research associate Kaden Hazzard, former research associate Salvatore Manmana, newly minted Ph.D. Michael Foss-Feig, and Fellow Rey are working on developing new tools to understand these models, which describe both solids and ultracold particles. The theorists are collaborating with three experimental teams at JILA and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

When experimental physicists at Penn State were unable to observe some of the predicted behaviors of ultracold rubidium (Rb) atoms expanding inside a two-dimensional crystal of light, they turned to their theorist colleagues at the City University of New York and JILA for an explanation. Graduate student Shuming Li and Fellow Ana Maria Rey were happy to oblige.

The Cundiff group has taken an important step forward in the study of the quantum world. It has come up with an experimental technique to measure key parameters needed to solve the Schrödinger equation. The amazing Schrödinger equation describes the time-dependent evolution of quantum states in a physical system such as the group’s hot gas of potassium atoms (K). But, for the equation to work, someone has to figure out a key part of the equation known as the Hamiltonian.

Gold glitters because it is highly reflective, a quality once considered important for precision measurements made with gold-coated probes in atomic force microscopy (AFM). In reality, the usual gold coating on AFM probes is a major cause of force instability and measurement imprecision, according to research done by the Perkins group.

The Ye and Bohn groups have made a major advance in the quest to prepare “real-world” molecules at ultracold temperatures. As recently reported in Nature, graduate students Ben Stuhl and Mark Yeo, research associate Matt Hummon, and Fellow Jun Ye succeeded in cooling hydroxyl radical molecules (^*OH) down to temperatures of no more than five thousandths of a degree above absolute zero (5mK).

When the Thompson group first demonstrated its innovative “superradiant” laser the team noticed that sometimes the amount of light emitted by the laser would fluctuate up and down.  The researchers wondered what was causing these fluctuations. They were especially concerned that whatever it was could also be a problem in future lasers based on the same principles.

The Nesbitt group has figured out the central role of “plasmon resonances” in light-induced emission of electrons from gold or silver nanoparticles. Plasmons are rapid-fire electron oscillations of freely moving (conduction) electrons in metals. They are caused by light of just the “right frequency.”

Graduate student Ben Knurr and Fellow Mathias Weber have added new insight into a catalytic reaction based on a single gold atom with an extra electron that transfers this electron into carbon dioxide molecules (CO₂). This reaction could be an important first step future industrial processes converting waste CO₂ back into chemical fuels. As such, it could play a key role in a future carbon-neutral fuel cycle.

The world’s most stable optical atomic clock resides in the Ye lab in the basement of JILA’s S-Wing. The strontium-(Sr-)lattice clock is so stable that its frequency measurements don’t vary by more than 1 part in 100 quadrillion (1 x 10^-17) over a time period of 1000 seconds, or 17 minutes.

Most scientists think it is really hard to correlate, or entangle, the quantum spin states of many particles in an ultracold gas of fermions. Fermions are particles like electrons (and some atoms and molecules) whose quantum spin states prevent them from occupying the same lowest-energy state and forming a Bose-Einstein condensate. Entanglement means that two or more particles interact and retain a connection. Once particles are entangled, if something changes in one of them, all linked partners respond.

The Regal group recently completed a nifty feat that had never been done before: The researchers grabbed onto a single trapped rubidium atom (⁸⁷Rb) and placed it in its quantum ground state. This experiment has identified an important source of cold atoms that can be arbitrarily manipulated for investigations of quantum simulations and quantum logic gates in future high-speed computers.

The Jin and Cornell groups have discovered irrefutable evidence for the contact. The contact appears in ultracold gases under conditions when the atoms are close “contact” in a Bose-Einstein condensate, or BEC.  Like pressure, volume, and temperature, the contact is an important property of ultracold ensembles of atoms.  The contact is particularly important when the atoms interact with each other, since the contact tells you how likely it is that an atom in the ensemble is having a close encounter with another atom.

Former research associate Antonio Picón, research associate Agnieszka Jaron-Becker, and Fellow Andreas Becker have discovered a way to make the hydrogen molecular ion (H₂⁺) fall apart into its constituent atoms without exciting or ionizing the electron. This startling finding was a big surprise for the researchers, who recently figured out how to do something that conventional wisdom said was difficult, if not downright impossible.

Research associate Bruno Giacomazzo recently studied the effects of magnetic fields and matter on the likelihood that the merger of two black holes will produce jets of light of different frequencies ranging from radio waves to X-rays. If such signals are generated, it may be possible to detect them with ground- or space-based observatories. Their detection would help astronomers identify and study the unions of supermassive black holes that occur after galaxies collide. Supermassive black holes are found at the centers of most galaxies in the Universe.

Many neutron stars are surrounded by accretion disks. The disks are often made up of matter pulled in by the neutron star’s gravity from a companion star in a binary system. Over time, the neutron stars can swallow so much additional material that they collapse into black holes.

Members of the Jin group found a way to measure for the first time the a type of abstract “surface” in a gas of ultracold atoms that had been predicted in 1926 but not previously observed. Jin and her colleagues are leading researchers in the field of ultracold Fermi gases made up of thousands to millions of fermions.

Researchers from a German national laboratory, the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) have collaborated with Fellow Jun Ye, Visiting Fellow Lisheng Chen (Wuhan Institute of Physics and Mathematics, Chinese Academy of Sciences), and graduate student Mike Martin to come up with a clever approach to reducing heat-related “noise” in interferometers. 

Graduate student Dan Hickstein (Kapteyn/Murnane group) recently investigated the behavior of electrons ripped from atoms and molecules by intense infrared laser pulses. He and his colleagues collected the liberated electrons onto a detector where they formed intricate patterns that looked a lot like giant spiders. 

The interface between a gas and a solid is a remarkable environment for new investigations. Lots of fascinating chemistry takes place there, including catalysis. Catalysis is acceleration of a chemical reaction that is caused by an element like platinum that remains unchanged by a chemical reaction. For instance platinum catalyzes the transformation of carbon monoxide (CO) into carbon dioxide (CO2) in automobile catalytic converters. A better understanding of catalysis could improve the efficiency of manufacturing important chemicals as well as expanding our fundamental knowledge of chemistry.

The Kapteyn/Murnane group had the idea that it might be possible to produce bright, laser-like beams of x-rays using an ultrafast laser that fits on a small optics table. It was one of those “it probably can’t be done, but we have to try” moments that motivated them to put together a team that includes the Becker theory group, and 16 collaborators in New York, Austria, and Spain. The lead scientist on this effort, Dr. Tenio Popmintchev, was most concerned about the possibility of an explosion, because to generate x-rays at high photon energies, the laser needed to be focused into a fiber containing high-density helium gas at pressures as high as 80 atmospheres. Eighty atmospheres is 80 times the normal air pressure at sea level.