Research Highlights

JILA researchers have used a state-of-the-art atomic clock to narrow the search for elusive dark matter, an example of how continual improvements in clocks have value beyond timekeeping.

Follow that electron! JILA researchers have proposed a means of capturing an electron's flight path during ionization, and in doing so, determining the state of the atom at that moment.

When it comes to chemical reactions, shape matters. The Lewandowski Group have studied acetylene and its reactions with propyne and allene to find out how an isomer changes the chemical reaction pathway.

We're in the Second Quantum Revolution, and companies are eager to build and market new technology based on rapid advances in quantum physics. JILA Fellow Heather Lewandowski and her group decided to find out what qualifications these companies were looking for in the new quantum workforce. 

During upconversion photoluminescence in rubrene, four triplet state ions fight it out to release a single high-energy photon. 

A strangely shaped cloud of fermions revealed a record-fast way of cooling atoms for quantum devices.

"Unraveling" cell membrane proteins could help us understand how to build better drugs and treatments for disease.

In the wake of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, instructors are planning their courses for virtual platforms—a major challenge for laboratory classes. JILA Fellow Heather Lewandowski has gathered some helpful tools for those teaching physics labs in a virtual classroom.

Using the laser from the strontium optical atomic clock, physicists can generate multiple cat-state atoms quickly and easily.

Electronics keep shrinking. As they shrink the properties of the materials that make them change too. 

Within our solar system are icy planetary bodies that do not orbit the Sun. JILA Fellow Ann Marie Madigan's group suggest that these detached objects have steadily nudged themselves out of solar orbit over millions of years.

Bringing molecules down to ultracold temperatures takes a mythic approach, but the Ye Group finds that their new scheme can hold up under tough conditions.

The secrets of nature are written in nanoscale. Now the Raschke Group has found a way to read those secrets.

The world is out-of-equilibrium, and JILA scientists are trying to learn what rules govern the dynamic systems that make our universe so complex and beautiful, from black holes to our living bodies.

In a new study from the Kapteyn-Murnane Group, ultrafast laser pulses can precisely cut through and manipulate the interaction between electrons and phonons in tantalum diselenide, changing its properties.

Could quantum entanglement improve our cell phone networks? The Graeme Smith Group at JILA found the answer by playing mathematical logic games.

Quantum technologies could process information even faster if they could harness the speed of light. Using gold nanostars, the Nesbitt Lab have found a way to use light to steer electric currents. 

How do you find a single cell in a sea of thousands? You make it glow. Adding fluorescence helps track movement and changes in small things like cells, DNA, and bacteria. In a library of millions of cells or bacteria, flow cytometry sorts the glowing material you want to study from the non-glowing material.

Using optical tweezers, the Kaufman and Ye groups at JILA have achieved record coherence times, an important advance for optical clocks and quantum computing.

Quantum drums can get around distracting noise with a new measurement technique—one that perfectly demonstrates the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.