In The News

It’s not easy making green.

For years, scientists have fabricated small, high-quality lasers that generate red and blue light. However, the method they typically employ—injecting electric current into semiconductors—hasn’t worked as well in building tiny lasers that emit light at yellow and green wavelengths. Researchers refer to the dearth of stable, miniature lasers in this region of the visible-light spectrum as the “green gap.” Filling this gap opens new opportunities in underwater communications, medical treatments and more.

Chip-based devices known as frequency combs, which measure the frequency of light waves with unparalleled precision, have revolutionized time keeping, the detection of planets outside of our solar system and high-speed optical communication.
Now, scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and their collaborators have developed a new way of creating the combs that promises to boost their already exquisite accuracy and allow them to measure light over a range of frequencies that was previously inaccessible. The extended range will enable frequency combs to probe cells and other biological material.
The new devices, which are fabricated on a small glass chip, operate in a fundamentally different way from previous chip-based frequency combs, also known as microcombs.

Researchers at JQI and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed standards and calibrations for optical microscopes that allow quantum dots to be aligned with the center of a photonic component to within an error of 10 to 20 nanometers (about one-thousandth the thickness of a sheet of paper). Such alignment is critical for chip-scale devices that employ the radiation emitted by quantum dots to store and transmit quantum information.

In research, sometimes the bumpy path proves to be the best one. By creating tiny, periodic bumps in a miniature racetrack for light, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and their colleagues at JQI have converted near-infrared (NIR) laser light into specific desired wavelengths of visible light with high accuracy and efficiency.

If gamblers, investors and quantum experimentalists could bend the arrow of time, their advantage would be significantly higher, leading to significantly better outcomes.

Scientists have been searching for dark matter with no success for more than 30 years. JQI and other NIST researchers are now exploring new ways to search for the invisible particles. In one study, a prototype for a much larger experiment, researchers have used state-of-the-art superconducting detectors to hunt for dark matter. The study has already placed new limits on the possible mass of one type of hypothesized dark matter. Another NIST team has proposed that trapped electrons, commonly used to measure properties of ordinary particles, could also serve as highly sensitive detectors of hypothetical dark matter particles if they carry charge.

Pablo Solano, a former graduate student at JQI and current assistant professor at the University of Concepción in Chile, has been named a Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) Azrieli Global Scholar. Solano is one of 18 researchers selected this year from more than 200 applicants to receive support from the program.

The University of Maryland has been tapped to lead a multi-institutional effort supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) that is focused on developing quantum simulation devices that can understand, and thereby exploit, the rich behavior of complex quantum systems.

A collaboration between researchers at JQI and North Carolina State University has developed a new method that uses a quantum computer to measure the thermodynamic properties of a system. The team shared the new approach in a paper published August 18, 2021, in the journal Science Advances.

JQI Fellow Jake Taylor has been recognized by the federal government for his role in expanding U.S. policy and efforts in the fiercely competitive field of quantum information science. Taylor, who is also a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), is the recipient of the 2020 Gold Medal Award from the Department of Commerce.