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JILA researchers, working with collaborators in Germany, demonstrated that new crystalline mirror coatings dramatically reduce atomic-level noise in optical cavities, enabling lasers with record‑breaking frequency stability. By outperforming traditional coatings by a factor of four, these mirrors open the door to more precise experiments and future advances in technologies such as atomic clocks and gravitational‑wave detection.

JILA researchers have taken a major step toward realizing next‑generation nuclear clocks by studying how thorium‑doped crystals behave over time. In new experiments published in Nature, the team tracked the stability, temperature response, and reproducibility of three calcium‑fluoride crystals containing different concentrations of thorium. Over nearly a year of measurements, all three crystals demonstrated remarkably stable nuclear transition frequencies—an essential requirement for building reliable nuclear clocks.

For the past several years, an experimental research group led by JILA Fellow James Thompson and a theoretical research group led by JILA Fellow Ana Maria Rey have been working together to study quantum interactions using cavity quantum electrodynamics (cavity QED)—the science of how light contained in reflective cavities interacts with quantum particles, like individual atoms. Recently, they tackled many-body interactions with a new experiment, described in an article published in the journal Science. In the experiment, they successfully created interactions that require the participation of either three or four atoms to achieve the observed results.

In a new study, researchers led by JILA and NIST Fellow Jun Ye have shown how to make atomic clocks even more precise by leveraging entanglement. This allows the atoms to “tick” more in sync, reducing the randomness that usually limits how precisely we can measure time.

Their results show that it’s possible to go beyond what’s known as the Standard Quantum Limit (SQL)—a fundamental barrier in quantum measurements—by using a technique called spin squeezing. This work could help improve everything from GPS systems to tests of gravity and the nature of the universe.

Jun Ye's research group has developed a groundbreaking laser system with record-breaking stability, crucial for advancing quantum technologies. By combining a highly stable silicon cavity laser with a frequency comb and a secondary cavity tuned for strontium atoms, the researchers created a laser capable of manipulating quantum states with unprecedented precision. Their system significantly reduces frequency noise, a major hurdle in quantum experiments, and demonstrated its effectiveness by achieving a new fidelity record in quantum gate operations on 3000 neutral atom qubits. This innovation paves the way for more accurate atomic clocks and scalable quantum computing.

JILA is proud to announce that Chuankun Zhang, a former graduate student in ��ñ���� Physics professor and JILA and NIST Fellow Jun Ye’s research group, has been named a recipient of the prestigious 2025 Boeing Quantum Creators Prize. This national honor recognizes early-career researchers whose work is propelling quantum science and engineering in bold new directions.

In a groundbreaking study researchers at JILA have demonstrated continuous lasing and strong atom-cavity coupling using laser-cooled strontium atoms. This innovative experiment opens new avenues for precision measurement and quantum technologies, promising advancements in quantum sensing and metrology.

The first Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC) was first created by Eric Cornell, Carl Wieman, Mike Anderson, Jason Ensher, and Michael Matthews on June 5, 1995 in JILA at the ����. This new state of matter was first predicted 70 years earlier. Satyendra Nath Bose first described the quantum statistics of what we now call bosons, and Albert Einstein extended the theory to show that non-interacting bosons could condense into a single macroscopic quantum state at low temperature.

In a recent study published in Science, by JILA and NIST Fellows and ���� physics professors Jun Ye and Ana Maria Rey, interactions between atoms are explored in depth, focusing on superexchange processes that occur in a three-dimensional optical lattice.

The strange behaviors of high-temperature superconductors—materials that conduct electricity without resistance above the boiling point of liquid nitrogen—and other systems with unusual magnetic properties have fascinated scientists for decades. While researchers have developed mathematical models for these systems, much of the underlying quantum dynamics and phases remain a mystery because of the immense computational difficulty of solving these models.