Thompson Group
James Thompson group
Wagner
Cameron joined the group in the spring of 2024 after graduating from Stanford University. There he worked with Prof. Monika Schleier-Smith to create arbitrary 2D optical potentials as well as arrays of blue detuned bottle beams using a spatial light modulator. Currently, he is working with strontium to build a continuous-wave superradiant laser.
Bohr
Eliot joined the group as a postdoctoral researcher in the spring of 2024. He completed his PhD from the University of Copenhagen, Niels Bohr Institute in the group of Jan Thomsen and Jörg Helge Müller researching collective effects in strontium cavity QED systems on the kHz line, with a view towards metrology applications. Previously, he has worked in the early stages of a ytterbium atom interferometry lab in Prof. Paul Hamilton’s group at UCLA and a strontium BEC experiment in Prof.
Maruko
Chitose joined the group in Fall 2023 after graduating from Smith College. At Smith, she worked on precision spectroscopies on light elements with Prof. Will Raven. Before moving to Boulder, she spent half a year on a sub-tropical island in Japan, Okinawa, working with Prof. Hiroki Takahashi on building an integrated ion-cavity interface. She is currently working on a Rubidium matter-wave interferometer experiment, exploring squeezing and cavity mediated interactions inside a matter-wave interferometer.
Schäfer
Vera is a postdoctoral research associate working on realising a continuous-wave superradiant laser using Strontium atoms in a high finesse ring cavity. She joined the lab in 2021 coming from the University of Oxford where she was working on trapped ion quantum computing.
Song
Eric joined the lab in Spring 2022 after graduating from New York University Shanghai. At NYU, he worked on entangling BECs with Prof. Tim Byrnes, as well as phase transitions in the Vicsek model and Ising model with Prof. Paul Chaikin, Charles Newman and Daniel Stein. Currently he is working on simulating many-body physics with strontium atoms.
Niu
Zhijing joined the group in fall 2021 after graduating from Xi’an Jiaotong University. In the past, she worked on condensed matter experiments with Prof. Mengkun Liu at Stony Brook University as an exchange student. After that, she switched her interest to AMO physics and did a gap year in Prof. John Doyle’s group at Harvard University where she worked on laser cooling ytterbium hydroxide. She did her first year of graduate school remotely in China and worked in Prof. Matthias Weidemüller’s group on Rydberg atoms at USTC.
The Physics Frontiers Centers (PFC) program supports university-based centers and institutes where the collective efforts of a larger group of individuals can enable transformational advances in the most promising research areas. The program is designed to foster major breakthroughs at the intellectual frontiers of physics by providing needed resources such as combinations of talents, skills, disciplines, and/or specialized infrastructure, not usually available to individual investigators or small groups, in an environment in which the collective efforts of the larger group can be shown to be seminal to promoting significant progress in the science and the education of students. PFCs also include creative, substantive activities aimed at enhancing education, broadening participation of traditionally underrepresented groups, and outreach to the scientific community and general public.