ion trap

Rajibul Islam was recently awarded UMDs Distinguished Dissertation Award for his thesis work on quantum magnetism with ions in Chris Monroe's Trapped Ion Quantum Information group. According to the graduate school's website, "The Distinguished Dissertation Award recognizes original work that makes an unusually significant contribution to the discipline.

Frustration crops up throughout nature when conflicting constraints on a physical system compete with one another. The way nature resolves these conflicts often leads to exotic phases of matter that are poorly understood. This week’s issue of Science Magazine features new results from the research group of Christopher Monroe at the JQI, where they explored how to frustrate a quantum magnet comprised of sixteen atomic ions – to date the largest ensemble of qubits to perform a simulation of quantum matter.

Recently Science Magazine invited JQI fellow Chris Monroe and Duke Professor Jungsang Kim to speculate on ion trap technology as a scalable option for quantum information processing. The article is highlighted on the cover of this week’s (March 8, 2013) issue, which is dedicated to quantum information. The cover portrays a photograph of a surface trap that was fabricated by Sandia National Labs and used to trap ions at JQI and Duke, among other laboratories.

The Joint Quantum Institute would like to again congratulate the 2012 Nobel Prize in physics recipients, David Wineland and Serge Haroche. The Nobel Prize committee cites Wineland and Haroche “for ground-breaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems.” The awards were bestowed during the ceremony in Stockholm on December 10, 2012.