We use laser-cooling and trapping of neutral atoms as the basis for a wide variety of applications to fundamental and practical problems. Our laboratory pioneered many of the key techniques used to create cold atomic gases, like deceleration of atomic beams, atom trapping, sub-Doppler cooling, optical lattices, etc. Today we use cold atomic gases, often quantum degenerate systems, to study a variety of applicatioins and phenomena including quantum information processing, quantum simulation, and quantum metrology. Our group is part of the Joint Quantum Institute and we have research on both the NIST-Gaithersburg and the University of Maryland-Colleg Park campuses. Our research benefits from strong collaborations with other experimentalists and theorists at NIST and the JQI, and internationally. A few examples of recent work are:
"A Rapidly Expanding Bose-Einstein Condensate: An Expanding Universe in the Lab," S. Eckel, A. Kumar, T. Jacobson, I. B. Spielman, and G. K. Campbell, Phys. Rev. X, 8, 021021 (2018).
"Dark State Optical Lattice with a Subwavelength Spatial Structure," Y. Wang, S. Subhankar, P. Bienias, M. Lacki, T-C. Tsui, M. A. Baranov, A. V. Gorshkov, P. Zoller, J. V. Porto, and S. L. Rolston, Phys. Rev. Lett., 120, 083601 (2018).
"Spinor Dynamics in an Antiferromagnetic Spin-1 Thermal Bose Gas," H. K. Pechkis, J. P. Wrubel, A. Schwettmann, P. F. Griffin, R. Barnett, E. Tiesinga, and P. D. Lett, Phys. Rev. Lett., 111, 025301 (2013).