Mark Edwards - US grants

Professor Payne and his colleagues will establish an optical multiphoton spectroscopy laboratory at Georgia Southern University. This grant will fund the purchase of equipment to begin the laboratory. This research will involve undergraduates and is funded under the RUI (research at undergraduate institution) program of NSF.

This proposal is for equipment only for experiments investigating interference effects in multiphoton ionization and for (or six) wave mixing in rare gases. It is relevant to theories of self-induced transparency and to understanding the range of adiabatic theory in short pulse excitation.

This theoretical research program, to be performed by researchers at Georgia
Southern University in collaboration with researchers at the University of Maryland at College Park (UMCP), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom, will study ways in which ultra-cold atoms, manipulated by lasers and magnetic fields, can operate as a "quantum computer". The dynamics of mixtures of ultra-cold atoms, in states known as Bose-Einstein condensates - states where the matter-wave shapes of a large collection of atoms are all the same - will be studied.

The project will enhance the infrastructure for research and education by maintaining an established collaboration among a U.S. undergraduate institution (GA Southern), a national laboratory (NIST), and an international partner (Sheffield). Broad dissemination to enhance scientific and technological understanding will be accomplished by organizing a Distinguished Lecture Series on the campus at Georgia Southern University. Finally, modeling the entire process of implementing a quantum circuit on an experimentally realized optical lattice system represents a significant step toward the development of a practical quantum?computational device. Such a device would have major societal benefits in the areas of internet and homeland security.

This theoretical research program, to be performed by a collaboration among Dr. Mark Edwards of Georgia Southern University and researchers at the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI), an institute run jointly by the University of Maryland and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), will be devoted to the exploration of new ultra-cold atom interferometer designs, inspired by techniques developed in Quantum Information Science, for the avoidance, minimization, and correction of decoherence in quantum computers. These new designs will be targeted toward improving the sensitivity, stability, and robustness of ultra-cold atom interferometers. Applications of such interferometers include enhanced navigation sensing, precision metrology, and quantum information processing.

This program will enable two talented Georgia Southern University undergraduate physics majors to gain cutting-edge research experience in the area of ultra-cold atom theory, thus advancing discovery while promoting learning. A Virtual Research Group will be established in which Georgia Southern students will attend the weekly Quantum Information/Bose-Einstein meetings at NIST via the internet. The project will enhance the infrastructure for research and education by maintaining an established collaboration among an undergraduate institution (GA Southern), a national laboratory (NIST), and a major research university (University of Maryland). Broad dissemination to enhance scientific and technological understanding will be accomplished by bringing distinguished scientists to the Georgia Southern University campus to present colloquia and to hold face-to-face research meetings. Finally, development of new interferometric methods for precision sensing using ultracold-atom systems can provide the foundation for a new generation of practical devices that will find applications in navigation, metrology, geodesy, and studies of the fundamental properties of matter.

This theoretical research program, to be performed by a collaboration between Dr. Mark Edwards of Georgia Southern University and Dr. Charles W. Clark of the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI), an institute run jointly by the University of Maryland and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), will be devoted to the design and study of new "atom circuits" for the purpose of developing an ultra-precise rotation sensor and for gaining a greater fundamental understanding of quantum matter at ultra-cold temperatures. An "atom circuit" is an atomic gas confined by laser light and held at temperatures just a few billionths of a degree above absolute zero. Gases of identical atoms confined at such low temperatures cause the constituent atoms to exhibit their wave-like quantum nature and the gas can form a state called a "Bose-Einstein condensate" (BEC). A BEC is a system of identical atoms all of whose matter-wave shapes are the same. Bose-Einstein-condensed gases can be manipulated by the confining laser light into arbitrary shapes such as rings and the atoms can be made to flow around circuits within the confinement. Such systems are called "atom circuits". These circuits have the potential to be at the heart of quantum devices that can sense rotations and magnetic and gravitational fields in an ultra-precise way. This research program will design new atom circuits and develop theoretical tools for characterizing and probing them. This work will performed in close collaboration with experimental researchers at JQI/NIST.

This research program is designed to enable two talented Georgia Southern University undergraduate physics majors to gain cutting-edge research experience in the area of ultra-cold atom theory thus advancing discovery while promoting learning. Edwards and the Georgia Southern students will communicate with both the JQI research group headed by Charles Clark and with members of the Laser Cooling and Trapping group at NIST, headed by Gretchen Campbell, using Google Hangout. Georgia Southern students will attend the weekly Quantum Information/Bose-Einstein meetings at NIST via the internet. The project will enhance the infrastructure for research and education by maintaining an established collaboration among an undergraduate institution (GA Southern), a national laboratory (NIST), and a major research university (University of Maryland). Broad dissemination to enhance scientific and technological understanding will be accomplished by bringing distinguished scientists to the Georgia Southern University campus to present colloquia and by developing visualization capabilities with the new digital projection system in the Georgia Southern Planetarium. Finally, new atom-circuits have the potential to be at the heart of a new generation of practical devices that will find applications in navigation, metrology, geodesy, and studies of the fundamental properties of matter.

This collaboration will conduct a theoretical exploration of various designs of atom circuits formed by confining a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) gas in an optical potential consisting of a horizontally oriented red-detuned light sheet and an arbitrary two-dimensional potential within this plane created by various red- and blue-detuned laser beams. Advances in optical trapping technology have enabled the creation of ultra-cold atom systems strongly confined in the vertical direction while being subject to an arbitrary potential in the horizontal plane. New atom-circuit potentials will be devised and studied. Studies of these systems will include (1) circuit behavior, (2) development of simple models of circuit operation analogous to Kirchhoff's rules for electronic circuits, (3) theoretical development of possible experimental probes to measure parameters appearing in these simple models, (4) effects of the environment, such as finite temperature, on circuit operation. The major tools that will be developed will be the Zaremba-Nikuni-Griffin (ZNG) theory in the laboratory and rotating frame. The ZNG theory treats the system as a combination of a BEC and a thermal cloud that can be weakly perturbed. The result is a finite-temperature, non-equilibrium system.

This award provides travel support for student participation in the 2017 meeting of the APS Division of Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics. The conference program includes many of the research topics central to Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics and Quantum Information Science. The support of students through this award makes a substantial contribution to the education and training of future scientists. Students who graduate with a background in atomic, molecular, and optical physics acquire a broad range of knowledge and skills that enable them to contribute to progress in many areas of science and technology.

The meeting is scheduled to be held in Sacramento, CA in June of 2017. It offers an opportunity for students to present their research results and to interact with senior scientists primarily from the United States, but also the broader international community. Support is provided only for US students (students enrolled in US universities).

An "atom circuit" is a thin sheet of atomic gas that has been confined to two-dimensions by squeezing it with laser light and cooling it to nearly the absolute zero of temperature. The low temperature of such confined gases enhances the display of the wave-like quantum mechanical nature of the constituent atoms so that they form a state called a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). A horizontal thin sheet of gas in the BEC state can be molded by the confining laser light into arbitrary closed-loop shapes analogous to closed electric circuits. The gas can then be stirred by lasers so that it flows around the closed loop like the electrons in an electric circuit except that the particles are neutral atoms. "Atomtronics" is accordingly an analogue of electronics in which entire atoms flow through a circuit. Atomtronic systems are of interest because they could potentially be used as extremely sensitive quantum sensors of rotations, of magnetic fields, and of gravitational fields. This research program will study how the quantum turbulence that often appears when such gases are stirred can be harnessed to enhance the operation of these quantum sensor devices. Methods for readout of the important characteristics of these circuits (such as analogs of ammeters and voltmeters in electric circuits) will be developed. This work, performed with undergraduate students at an RUI institution, is conducted in close collaboration with experimental researchers at JQI/NIST.

The collaboration will study the behavior of ultracold samples of atomic gases strongly confined in a horizontal plane and subjected to arbitrary space-dependent and time-dependent potentials produced by laser light. The research will take advantage of recent experimental breakthroughs in the optical manipulation of ultracold gases in designing new atom circuit potentials. In this work a variety of different atom-circuit designs will be investigated. Each atom circuit to be studied will be assumed to be completely filled by the atoms condensed into a BEC. Methods of producing condensate flow, especially smooth flow, will be studied. The operation of each atom circuit will be simulated both at zero and non-zero temperature. The flow present in atom circuits often involves the appearance of numerous topological excitations such as vortices (i.e., miniature tornadoes in the gas) and solitons (solitary waves that move without degrading) and thus exhibits "quantum turbulence". One focus of this research will be to detect the presence of all such excitations and then follow and analyze their behavior. These studies will enable the development of simple models of vortex and solitonic behavior in the atomtronic systems. Such models will be useful in designing optimally performing atom circuits for applications. This research program will enable at least two undergraduate physics majors to gain state-of-the-art research experience in the area of ultracold atom theory. The project will enhance the infrastructure for research and education by enhancing an established collaboration among an undergraduate institution (GA Southern), a national laboratory (NIST), and a major research university (University of Maryland). Results of this research will be broadly disseminated to enhance scientific and technological understanding by developing virtual reality (VR) videos that describe the physics of BECs at a level that is accessible to the lay public. These VR videos will be suitable for display on VR headsets such as the Oculus Rift and Google Cardboard. Finally, an understanding of the role of quantum turbulence in atom-circuits will enable the design of a new generation of practical devices that will find applications in metrology and navigation. This knowledge will also add to the understanding of the fundamental properties of quantum matter.

Ultracold quantum gases can now be confined and manipulated with exquisite precision using laser light. When these gases are squeezed into thin, horizontal sheets they can be confined into various shapes within the sheet such as rings and disks. Cooling these confined gases to near absolute zero can cause them to transition to a state where the quantum (i.e. wave-like) natures of all the gas atoms lock together and become identical and thus act as one. Such a state is called a "Bose-Einstein condensate" (BEC) and a system in this state can display ultra-sensitivity to the acceleration and rotation of its environment. This research will investigate how such systems, called "atomtronic systems," can therefore be used as rotation and acceleration sensors. In particular this work will investigate how keeping such systems at low but non-zero temperatures can be used to enhance their performance as sensors. Fundamental studies will also be carried out to understand the thermodynamics of these gases and this knowledge will be used to inform the sensor performance studies. This work will be performed by a team of researchers at Georgia Southern University and at the Joint Quantum Institute housed at the University of Maryland, College Park. This work will be performed in partnership with ColdQuanta, Inc. ColdQuanta provides cold-matter technology to government and academics. They have donated time on their "Albert" quantum matter machine to facilitate these studies. The societal benefit of this work will be to improve sensors for precision navigation applications that are essential to commercial travel and the US national defense.<br/><br/>The Intellectual Merit of this project has two areas. In the first area the effects of finite temperature on the operation of atomtronic quantum sensors and interferometers will be studied. Atomtronic precision navigation ideas such as double-ring BECs accelerometers, double-target BEC array rotation sensors, dual-Sagnac atom interferometer (AI) rotation sensors, and large-ring BEC waveguides will be investigated. Simulations will be performed of their operation with a variety of non-equilibrium finite-temperature models. These models will investigate how the presence of a thermal cloud might be used to enhance sensor operation. In the second area fundamental studies of the quantum thermodynamics (QT) of systems in the QT "Sandbox" will be performed. The QT Sandbox is a quasi-2D gas containing one or more BECs created in various potentials at different temperatures that can be stirred, phase-imprinted, moved into and out of contact, and probed. Studies include thermalization of shaken/stirred/phase-imprinted finite-temperature BECs; how to probe thermal characteristics systems by imaging; how to build traditional thermodynamic systems such as heat engines and refrigerators; how atomtronic thermometers can be constructed; and finally the thermodynamics of transport of atomtronic systems. This project will also provide two undergraduate physics majors at Georgia Southern University with research experiences in cutting-edge, ultracold-atom research. Students will also be able to collaborate with scientists at the Joint Quantum Institute. They will also develop ways of using the Georgia Southern University planetarium and virtual-reality headsets for visualizing, analyzing, and presenting data obtained from simulations of atomtronic sensors and interferometers.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.