Physics Frontier Center News

Experimental quantum physics often resides in the coldest regimes found in the universe, where the lack of large thermal disturbances allows quantum effects to flourish. A key ingredient to these experiments is being able to measure just how cold the system of interest is. Laboratories that produce ultracold gas clouds have a simple and reliable method to do this: take pictures! The temperature of a gas depends on the range of velocities among the particles, namely the size of the difference between the slowest- and the fastest-moving particles.

JQI Fellow and NIST Scientist Gretchen Campbell has recently been announced as the IUPAP 2015 Young Scientist Prize recipient in the field of Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics. The organization cited her "outstanding contributions in toroidal Bose-Einstein condensates and its application to "atomtronic" circuits." 

Optical fibers are hair-like threads of glass used to guide light. Fibers of exceptional purity have proved an excellent way of sending information over long distances and are the foundation of modern telecommunication systems. Transmission relies on what’s called total internal reflection, wherein the light propagates by effectively bouncing back and forth off of the fiber’s internal surface.

A new study from Edo Waks' group has shown how to sharpen nanoscale microscopy (nanoscopy) even more by better locating the exact position of the light source. The improvement involves taking into account the phantom dipole induced in the surface of a nanowire by the presence of a nearby quantum dot. The interference of light emitted by the dot with light emitted (in effect) by the phantom distorts the estimation of the dot's true location.