Gorshkov Research Group

In this research area, we take advantage of the unique internal structure of ultracold alkaline-earth atoms (atoms in the second column of the periodic table) for quantum computing and clock applications, as well as for studying exotic many-body physics.

Atomic, molecular, and optical systems are often subject to dissipation and are often coherently driven by electromagnetic fields. Such driven-dissipative systems, often evolving according to a master equation rather than a Hamiltonian, are much less explored than their dissipationless counterparts. For example, exotic many-body states may emerge as steady states under nonequilibrium dynamics.

Topological phases, such as fractional quantum Hall states, are phases with no local order parameter and are instead characterized by more exotic quantities such as peculiar entanglement properties. The interest in topological phases stems to a large degree from the exotic nature of excitations in such systems, which not only carry fractional charge but also obey unusual statistics: when two such excitations, called anyons, are exchanged, they - in contrast to fermions that pick up a phase of π - can pick up a phase that can be a fraction of π.

Photons usually don't interact with each other. A grand long-term challenge that we try to solve in the quantum optics part of our research is to implement and study strongly interacting photons. In addition to making optical quantum computing and quantum communication more efficient, strongly interacting photons allow for increased precision in imaging and metrology, and also give rise to fascinating many-body physics (e.g. crystallization of photons or novel dissipative time-dependent phenomena).

AMO systems with long-range interactions, such as polar molecules and Rydberg atoms, are arguably the most controllable, tunable, and strongly interacting quantum systems. Precise control over them has recently opened a new paradigm for quantum computing and communication, entanglement generation, and engineering of new phases of matter. Our goal is to advance the frontier of this new paradigm by exploring the – still largely unknown – potential of these systems, which are often evolving in time far out of equilibrium.