Research Highlights

The world is out-of-equilibrium, and JILA scientists are trying to learn what rules govern the dynamic systems that make our universe so complex and beautiful, from black holes to our living bodies.

In a new study from the Kapteyn-Murnane Group, ultrafast laser pulses can precisely cut through and manipulate the interaction between electrons and phonons in tantalum diselenide, changing its properties.

Could quantum entanglement improve our cell phone networks? The Graeme Smith Group at JILA found the answer by playing mathematical logic games.

Quantum technologies could process information even faster if they could harness the speed of light. Using gold nanostars, the Nesbitt Lab have found a way to use light to steer electric currents. 

How do you find a single cell in a sea of thousands? You make it glow. Adding fluorescence helps track movement and changes in small things like cells, DNA, and bacteria. In a library of millions of cells or bacteria, flow cytometry sorts the glowing material you want to study from the non-glowing material.

Using optical tweezers, the Kaufman and Ye groups at JILA have achieved record coherence times, an important advance for optical clocks and quantum computing.

Quantum drums can get around distracting noise with a new measurement technique—one that perfectly demonstrates the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.

Atoms could live in their excited states forever by reaching a dark state.

New research from the Cornell Group suggests that the van der Waals universality may have limitations.

How do you hear--and study--the quietest sound in the universe? With a special microphone and speaker. 

An advance from the Raschke group could free quantum technology from ultra-cold temperatures.

Using Feshbach resonance, physicists have found that they can control a dynamical phase transition in an out-of-equilibrium state. 

It's hard to read a clock with hands that wobble. The Ye Group has found a way to steady their optical atomic clock using a new cavity.

While we've known for a while that black holes could rip stars apart, we don’t know why these events occur so frequently. Now, a model by JILA researchers explaining this discrepancy is shown to be promising after passing its first reality test.

It's tough to get tightly-wound balls of DNA to lay down flat and straighten out to get their picture taken. A new technique from the Perkins group gets a crisp, clear picture in just five minutes.

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. 

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

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. 

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.