Our paper reporting microwave shielding and first evaporative cooling of bosonic dipolar ground state molecules just came out in Nature Physics! We observe sample lifetimes of 1 second (100x improvement compared to previous) and cool bosonic molecules to the coldest temperatures yet (~30 nK above absolute zero), which should be an important stepping stone for further cooling towards quantum degeneracy. Congrats to the entire team and to Niccolò and Ian for leading this effort! 

Link: Nat. Phys. (2023)

Article by Ellen Neff: A Microwave Shield Yields Ultracold Dipolar Molecules

For microwave-shielding of NaCs molecules we developed a cloverleaf microwave antenna that can produce clean circularly polarized microwave fields. Clean circular polarization can be helpful for quantum control applications with atoms and molecules, and potentially other quantum hardware systems. Congrats to the entire team and thank you to Weijun and Siwei for leading this! Link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.14791

Our paper on the efficient creation of ultracold NaCs molecules just appeared in New Journal of Physics. We show STIRAP transfer to the absolute ground state with almost 90% efficiency. We are very excited about this as it allows the preparation of dipolar NaCs molecules at colder temperatures and efficient detection. Congrats to the entire team and to Claire for leading this effort! Link: New J. Phys. 25, 053036 (2023)

In this work, we demonstrate that holographic metasurfaces can generate versatile optical tweezer arrays. We demonstrate exotic lattice geometries in 1D, 2D, and 3D, including necklace, triangular, Kagome, honeycomb, twisted bilayer. We are excited to apply this for the generation of atomic tweezer arrays. In collaboration with our Columbia colleagues Nanfang Yu and Ana Asenjo-Garcia, and thanks to Xiaoyan Huang and Weijun Yuan for leading this effort! Link: Prog. Quantum Electron. 100470 (2023)

Our paper on the creation of ultracold NaCs ground state molecules just appeared in Physical Review Letters. Among other things, we show strong microwave coupling for rotational states (~45 MHz Rabi frequency). Congrats to Ian and the entire team on the amazing work! Link: Phys. Rev. Lett. 130, 113003 (2023)

In this week's Nature magazine Tanya Zelevinsky and Sebastian discuss newly discovered resonance phenomena in ultracold molecular gases and give an outlook on their impact on future research in quantum chemistry and quantum simulation with molecules. Link: Nature, 614, 35-36 (2023)

Our TweeSr Lab is greeting the New Year with strontium atoms trapped in optical tweezer arrays! The array is generated with a crossed AOD setup. Congrats to the entire TweeSr team on this wonderful achievement & Happy New Year to everyone! 

Sebastian and Prof. Henry Yuan from the Columbia Computer Science department comment on the history, accomplishment, and impact of John Clauser's work for quantum science and technology today. Clauser conceived his concept to experimentally test Bell's inquality while being a grad student at Columbia University in the 60s. Together with Alain Aspect and Anton Zeilinger, he received the Physics Nobel Prize 2022. Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/z-qJiNQIquc

In this preprint, we present a new cold atom source for strontium based on a two-dimensional magneto-optical trap (2D MOT) that is directly loaded from the atom jet of a dispenser. The design addresses the importnat challenge of reducing the complexity of cold beam sources for strontium, which is relevant for optical atomic clocks and quantum simulation and computing devices based on ultracold Sr. Thanks to Minho and Aaron and the entire team for driving forward this approach! https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.14186

In this work, we propose metasurface holograms as a novel platform to generate optical trap arrays for cold atoms with high fidelity, efficiency, and thermal stability. We have characterized the resulting patterns of light which may find potential applications in atomic clocks, quantum optics, quantum simulation and quantum computing. Thank you to the entire team, especially to our collaborators from the Asenjo-Garcia and Yu groups! https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.07425 

Our latest preprint just appeared on arxiv reporting the first ultracold gases of NaCs ground state molecules ⚛️-⚛️. Ultracold gases of dipolar NaCs molecules open new exciting opportunities for quantum simulation and quantum information - and we cannot wait to explore them. Thanks a lot to the  NaCs team for all the amazing work that led to this!

https://arxiv.org/abs/2206.00652

We started the new "Quantum Simulation and Computing Lab" course this semester. Students gain hands-on experience with entangled photon pairs, learn about quantum computing hardware, quantum algorithms, and how to program quantum computers. Thanks a lot to our TA team - Aden, Joseph, Shuhan, and Arjun - for making it a great success! Here an article in Columbia News.

Aden Lam, our first grad student graduates! Thank you, Aden, for going on this crazy  journey as the first lab member, starting from an empty lab. Congratulations on the successful defense and on an impressive thesis that documents all the wonderful things that you achieved! 

The coldest place in New York City is our NaCs lab! Thanks a lot to Columbia for making this beautiful video and thanks to everyone in the lab, who helped making this wonderful instrument a reality! Watch the video here: Youtube.

Check out our latest preprint on arxiv - first high phase-space density gases of NaCs Feshbach molecules & an exciting step towards ultracold gases of dipolar NaCs ground state molecules ⚛️-⚛️. Thank you to the entire NaCs team for the amazing work! Link to the preprint: 

https://arxiv.org/abs/2202.03355

Check out our latest preprint - if you have ever wondered, whether carbon dimers can be laser cooled this paper may offer some answers. Thanks a lot, Niccolò, for leading this study! Link to the preprint: 

https://arxiv.org/abs/2112.10745

QPOP - Quantum Physics Outreach Program - that we have developed in collaboration with STEMteachersNYC is featured on the Columbia News. It has reached more than 100 teachers across the nation so far. Thank you, Claire and everyone involved!

Sebastian gives the first in-person seminar at the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) at University of Maryland/NIST. The talk was also live streamed on Youtube. It is available here: JQI Seminar

We made our first 3D MOT of Strontium using a completely homebuilt source. Congrats to the entire TweeSr team, Minho, Aaron, Siwei, Weijun, Max, and Quan, on this great achievement!

Our paper on overlapping Bose-Einstein condensates of Na and Cs came out in PRA with an Editors' Suggestion. Congrats to the entire team for the amazing work! Check out the paper here:  Phys. Rev. A 104, 033302 (2021)

We received a  DURIP award from the Office of Naval Research supporting our NaCs molecule effort. Thanks a lot to the ONR DURIP program for the tremendous support! More information here.

We had a very successful DAMOP this year with Minho, Aden, Claire, Niccolò, Aaron, and Weijun all presenting on our recent developments. Nice job all!

Check out our latest paper - first dual Bose-Einstein condensates of sodium and cesium. Two overlapping superfluids and exciting conditions to make very cold clouds of NaCs ground state molecules. Congrats to the entire NaCs Lab team for this great achievement! Link to the preprint: arxiv:2106.01334

We got our first image of a triangular lattice pattern from a metasurface! It is the first step towards integrating this novel nanophotonic platform into an AMO experiment. We are looking forward to trapping atoms using it in the near future! Thank you Xiaoyan from Prof. Nanfang Yu’s group for providing the metasurfaces.

We produced an optical tweezer array with 30x30 traps! It is generated by two crossed acousto-optic deflectors driven with a comb of radiofrequency tones. The trap spacing is about 5 micrometers. Congrats to the entire TweeSr lab! 

The entire Will Lab wishes happy and healthy holidays and a great start into the New Year 2021! Thank you to the TweeSr team for the beautiful holiday visual!

Our new paper on our newly developed compact 2D MOT for Cesium is out on arxiv. The setup has helped us to make a Cesium BEC within 10 months despite a 3 months lab shutdown due to COVID. Congrats to the entire NaCs team on the amazing work!

We are excited to receive one of the competitive NSF Convergence Accelerator grants. In this project, we will lead the development of an integrated quantum simulator based on programmable atom arrays. We are looking forward to an exciting collaboration with colleagues at Columbia University, Brookhaven National Lab, CUNY, Flatiron Institute, and industry partners from Atom Computing, QuEra, IBM and Bloomberg. More details here. See also press release.

First Cesium Bose-Einstein condensate in the NaCs lab! Less than a year after the Sodium BEC, we have made the Cesium BECs in the same apparatus, lowering the temperature of the coldest spot in NYC by another factor of 10 to about 10 nanokelvin above absolute zero.

Welcome to a new element at Will Lab! Today we observed the first signal of strontium in our new TweeSr apparatus, adding another beautiful hue to the lab! For more information on TweeSr click here.