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James Williams

Assistant Professor

Alumni
Profile photo of James Williams

Contact Information

UMD

Email:
jwilliams@physics.umd.edu
Office:

University of Maryland

2160 PSC Building

College Park, MD 20742

Additional Info

Recent News

  • Quantum Materials Symposium to Showcase Local Expertise and Highlight Partnerships in D.C. Region

    September 25, 2019

    The University of Maryland will hold a one-day symposium focusing on local research into quantum materials—condensed matter systems that exhibit strong quantum effects and hold promise as potential components in next-generation computers, sensors and other devices. The symposium will be held Sept. 26, 2019, on campus in the Kim Engineering Building.Hosted by UMD’s Center for Nanophysics and Advanced Materials (CNAM)—which will be renamed the Quantum Materials Center next month—the event will bring together researchers from the university’s Departments of Physics, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Materials Science and Engineering, in addition to researchers from the nearby National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Laboratory for Physical Sciences. Around 50 quantum materials researchers and institutional leaders are expected to attend. CNAM Director and Professor of Physics Johnpierre Paglione, together with Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) Fellow and Assistant Professor of Physics James Williams, organized the event, which will include talks on recent quantum materials research as well as reflections on collaborations that have formed among UMD researchers and also between researchers at UMD and area partners such as NIST.

  • Modified superconductor synapse reveals exotic electron behavior

    September 17, 2018

    Electrons tend to avoid one another as they go about their business carrying current. But certain devices, cooled to near zero temperature, can coax these loner particles out of their shells. In extreme cases, electrons will interact in unusual ways, causing strange quantum entities to emerge. At the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI), Jimmy Williams’ group is working to develop new circuitry that could host such exotic states. These states have a feature that may make them useful in future quantum computers: They appear to be inherently protected from the destructive but unavoidable imperfections found in fabricated circuits. As described recently in Physical Review Letters, Williams’ team has reconfigured one workhorse superconductor circuit—a Josephson junction—to include a material suspected of hosting quantum states with boosted immunity.