Paul Hess
Middlebury College, VT·Physics
Single charged atoms (ions) can be held floating in a vacuum by electric fields. These trapped ions are a building block for quantum computing, communication and sensing.
- Fields
Physics
Engineering
- Topics
trapped ions
ion trap
ytterbium ions
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- Measure how strongly a single trapped ytterbium ion couples to a nearby bulk lead zirconate titanate piezoelectric resonator, detected as faster heating of the ion's motion on resonance.
- Map how the ion-piezo coupling changes with distance, by moving the crystal on an in-vacuum translation stage and taking thermometry measurements on the ion.
- Measure how the coupling depends on the trapped ion's vibrational frequency and compare all results with a theoretical model of the ion-piezo interaction.
More about the research
Today they are mostly controlled with laser beams. When ions sit close to a solid surface, though, new interactions appear. These could someday allow the ions to be controlled purely electronically, which would make experiments much simpler. One promising surface is a piezoelectric crystal, a material that turns tiny motions into electrical signals and is widely used in force and motion sensors.
Why it matters
Understanding how trapped ions couple to piezoelectric crystals could help quantum technologies scale past current limits on ion numbers. It could also lead to quantum transducers that send information about ion motion over long distances on laser light. Further out, it may enable quantum-enhanced readout for the piezoelectric sensors used to measure small forces and motions.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Nirav Mehta
Trinity University, TX·Physics
Refine a one-dimensional model of atom-ion collisions with ion confinement and extend it to three dimensions, computing elastic and inelastic collision rates, time delays, and trap-induced resonances.
Benjamin Augenbraun
Williams College, MA·Physics
Measure the electronic, vibrational, rotational, and hyperfine (nuclear spin) structure of molecules pairing copper, silver, or gold with lead, using laser spectroscopy to see which wavelengths of light they absorb.
Nir Navon
Yale University, CT·Physics
Test whether short-time spectral properties, measured with radio-frequency probes of synthetic spins, already encode the final outcome of thermalization in a strongly interacting ultracold Fermi gas.
The school
Middlebury College: 1 labs on PI Pages, $4M a year on research, 3 research doctorates a year.
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