News & Research Highlights

It's been 50 years since Apollo 11 landed on the moon. The last operating experiment from that mission was developed at JILA by Dr. James Faller. 

Researchers at JILA and the University of Salamanca have found a new property of light, one that creates a whirling vortex that can speed itself up. 

Known as the "young Nobels", JILA's own Ana Maria Rey has won a Blavatnik National Award.

JILA Fellow Phil Armitage is moving on from the University of Colorado. 

JILA graduate Tanya Roussy was honored at the 2019 DAMOP meeting.

Thinh Bui, a postdoctoral researcher in Jun Ye's group, won an early career prize from the journal Molecular Physics.

JILA Fellow Ana Maria Rey has been named a finalist for the prestigious Blavatnik Award for Young Scientists.

Getting a cluster state of perfectly entangled atoms for quantum computing may be easier using a tool in JILA's laboratory.

JILA Fellow Murray Holland was recognized for his outstanding teaching skills this spring.

Dr. Thomas Perkins won a Gears of Government Award for his work in atomic force microscopy. 

Hard work pays off. Mike Bennett was honored by CU for expanding JILA's outreach efforts through the Partnerships for Informal Science Education in the Community. 

Chris Greene, professor of physics and astronomy at Purdue University and former JILA Fellow, was named to the National Academy of Sciences.

JILA researchers have proposed an experiment that would allow them to study rapid scrambling of quantum information, similar to what happens at the event horizon of a black hole. 

High school students got a chance to show off their research at JILA.

Marit Fiechter, an undergraduate at the University of Groningen and former JILA student, won the SPIN prize for best undergraduate thesis project.

Trapping single atoms is a bit like herding cats, which makes researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder expert feline wranglers. In a new study, a team led by physicist Cindy Regal showed that it could load groups of individual atoms into large grids with an efficiency unmatched by existing methods.  

By using ultrafast lasers to measure the temperature of electrons, JILA researchers have discovered a never-before-seen state in an otherwise standard semiconductor. This research is the most recent demonstration of a new technique, called ultrafast electron calorimetry, which uses light to manipulate well-known materials in new ways.

JILA researchers have demonstrated a much easier, faster and more precise way to understand the structure and function of the HIV RNA molecule, especially the HIV RNA hairpin. Furthermore, the techniques developed for this research promise to allow a wider range of users to study similar biological molecules, as they are built upon commercially available and user-friendly atomic force microscopes, or AFMs.

When the Ye group measured the total quantum state of buckyballs, we learned that this large molecule can play by full quantum rules. Specifically, this measurement resolved the rotational states of the buckyball, making it the largest and most complex molecule to be understood at this level.

JILA researchers have, for the first time, trapped a single alkaline-earth atom and cooled it to its ground state. To trap this atom, researchers used an optical tweezer, which is a laser focused to a pinpoint that can hold, move and manipulate atoms. The full motional and electronic control wielded by this tool enables microscopically precise studies of the limiting factors in many of today’s forefront physics experiments, especially quantum information science and metrology.