Precision Measurement
Jun Ye, a distinguished Fellow at JILA and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and a physics professor at the ñ, has been honored with the 2025 Berthold Leibinger Zukunftspreis.
With the recent launch of NASA's Europa Clipper, science takes a bold step closer to answering one of its most profound questions: could the building blocks for life exist beyond Earth? Aboard the spacecraft is the Surface Dust Analyzer (SUDA), a cutting-edge instrument designed to analyze tiny particles ejected from Europa's icy surface. These particles could provide crucial insights into the moon's hidden ocean and its potential to support life.
At the heart of this revolutionary instrument lies a critical component developed by LASP (the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics) with assistance from JILA’s W.M. Keck Lab: an iridium-coated titanium target that makes the high-precision analysis of cosmic dust possible. While LASP designed and built the instrument, their collaboration with JILA highlights the abilities of the ñ’s institutes to tackle complex scientific and engineering challenges, advancing our understanding of the solar system and pushing the boundaries of exploration.
Researchers at the ñ have developed a novel method to measure magnetic field orientations using atoms as minuscule compasses. The research, a collaboration between JILA Fellow and ñ physics professor Cindy Regal and Svenja Knappe, a research professor in the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering, was recently published as the cover article in the journal Optica.
In a recent study published in Physical Review Letters, Rey and JILA and NIST Fellow James K. Thompson, along with graduate student Sanaa Agarwal and researcher Asier Piñeiro Orioli from the University of Strasbourg, studied atom-light interactions in the case of effective four-level atoms, two ground (or metastable) and two excited levels arranged in specific one-dimensional and two-dimensional crystal lattices.
Researchers at JILA have developed a novel microscope that makes examining ultrawide-bandgap semiconductors possible on an unprecedented scale. The team’s work, recently published in Physical Review Applied, introduces a tabletop deep-ultraviolet (DUV) laser that can excite and probe nanoscale transport behaviors in materials such as diamond. This microscope uses high-energy DUV laser light to create a nanoscale interference pattern on a material’s surface, heating it in a controlled, periodic pattern. Observing how this pattern fades over time provides insights into the electronic, thermal, and mechanical properties at spatial resolutions as fine as 287 nanometers, well below the wavelength of visible light.
JILA graduate student Clay Klein has been awarded the prestigious 2025 Nick Cobb Memorial Scholarship, presented by SPIE, the International Society for Optics and Photonics, and Siemens EDA. The scholarship, valued at $10,000, recognizes Klein’s outstanding contributions to the field of optics and photonics.
JILA Fellow, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Physicist and ñ physics professor Dr. Adam Kaufman has been awarded the prestigious Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). President Joe Biden announced that this accolade represents the highest honor conferred by the U.S. government to early-career scientists and engineers who exhibit extraordinary potential and leadership in their respective fields. Kaufman’s groundbreaking contributions to quantum science have cemented his place among nearly 400 recipients recognized for their innovative research and commitment to advancing scientific frontiers.
Shuo Sun, Associate Fellow at JILA and Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics at the ñ has been awarded a prestigious NSF CAREER Award for his research proposal, “Developing a High-Dimensional Photonic Quantum Register for the Quantum Internet.”
Reported recently in a new study published in Nature, a team of researchers, led by JILA and NIST Fellow and ñ Physics professor Jun Ye, in collaboration with Professor Eric Hudson’s team at UCLA’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, have found a way to make nuclear clocks a thousand times less radioactive and more cost-effective, thanks to a method creating thin films of thorium tetrafluoride (ThF4).
Recent research at the Laboratoire Charles Fabry and the Institut d’Optique in Paris studied a collection of atoms in free space forming an elongated, pencil-shaped cloud and reported the potential observation of this desired phase transition. Yet, the results of this study puzzled other experimentalists since atoms in free space don’t easily synchronize.
To better understand these findings, JILA and NIST Fellow Ana Maria Rey and her theory team collaborated with an international team of experimentalists. The theorists found that atoms in free space can only partially synchronize their emission, suggesting that the free-space experiment did not observe the superradiant phase transition. These results are published in PRX Quantum.