Yale Quantum Mechanics
Roxine Denison
Quantum science and engineering at Yale is a broad interdisciplinary area spanning several subfields of physics, electrical engineering, chemistry, computer science and materials science. Key intellectual foci include quantum computation and communication, quantum simulations, quantum sensing, and quantum materials.
Current Projects: Quadratic Echo Line-Narrowing, Imaging Hard and Soft Solids, Advancing Spectral Reconstruction with Undersampled Data Sets, Custom NMR/MRI Probe Design and Construction
Current Projects: Optomechanics: Radiation Pressure - Radiation pressure in the quantum engine, Optical control of microstructures, Mechanical control of nonclassical light and Persistent Current - Microcantilevers and probes of closed mesoscopic systems, In-situ electron thermometry, Persistent currents in normal-metal rings
If so, it would further indicate the centrality of quantum mechanics in the universe and begin to explain the previously unknown underpinnings of a natural phenomenon so ubiquitous that most people take its existence for granted.
The grant, entitled "NRT-QL: Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Quantum Materials Science and Engineering," is made through the NSF's Research Traineeship (NRT) program. It is one of 22 that the NSF announced on Wednesday.
Yale's Ph.D. training program aims to prepare trainees for careers in the field of quantum materials science and engineering. By providing an interdisciplinary set of curriculum requirements, professional skills training, and cutting-edge research activities, the NRT will build the infrastructure and organization needed to create a Ph.D. degree program in Materials Science.
"Our vision is that this NRT program will, on a time scale of several years, lead to a Ph.D.-granting program in Materials Science at Yale whose output will be a competitive and diverse set of Ph.D. graduates," said Sohrab Ismail-Beigi, principal investigator for the grant, and the Strathcona Professor of Applied Physics, Physics, & Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science. "But you can't start such a program on day one, so we will begin with a certificate program that will allow us to start offering the right courses, develop collaborative research directions, and build a Ph.D. student cohort."
Ismail-Beigi and co-principal investigator Corey O'Hern noted that the program is being established at a time when interest in quantum materials is rapidly growing. Harnessing and engineering the useful properties of materials has been a recurrent theme in the history of human advancement from mastering metallurgy in the Bronze Age to the creation of semiconductor devices in today's digital society. Quantum materials, which are materials where quantum mechanical effects are critical to their useful properties, have played an important part in this technological progress, and are poised to do so even more. For example, there is growing interest and excitement about quantum computers, as well as both government and industry funding of research and development in the quantum sciences.
Yale's NRT program, which will emphasize recruiting students who are under-represented in STEM, will train more than 30 Ph.D. students. These include 17 funded trainees, from Applied Physics, Chemistry, Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, and Physics. Trainees will become experts in creating, using, and understanding quantum materials, while gaining firsthand knowledge and developing skills in team building, science communication, outreach, teaching, and mentoring. All trainees are also eligible to carry out summer internships at Yale NRT partner companies and national laboratories.
The main research focus is on quantum materials in the form of crystalline nanowires: synergistic research on synthesis, characterization, theoretical and computational modeling, and data mining and machine learning. This will allow NRT researchers to understand and improve the properties of these materials, while training students to tackle cutting-edge, interdisciplinary research questions. While this NRT program focuses specifically on quantum materials, it provides a blueprint for similar efforts in other areas of Materials Science at Yale.
The NSF awarded a total of $63 million across the U.S. for the NRT program this year. The program is designed to create a new generation of STEM talent that reflects the diversity of the nation's communities and is prepared to develop innovative solutions to future challenges. Areas of study include artificial intelligence, climate resiliency, quantum materials, and STEM entrepreneurship. This is the first NRT award that Yale has received.
This year, the NSF NRT solicitation focused on data science and quantum information. Yale's program combines both fields. As a certificate program, candidates must apply to a Ph.D. degree-granting program at Yale and satisfy the course and skills training requirements for the certificate, while also completing the requirements for their Ph.D. program. The current departmental partners are Applied Physics, Physics, Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, Chemistry, and Computer Science.
"One of the novel things about the program is that every student in the program, regardless of their home department, is exposed to data science," said O'Hern, professor of mechanical engineering & materials science, physics, & applied physics. "There is one required course and several electives in machine learning that are applicable to materials science." Among the grant's senior personnel is Prof. Smita Krishnaswami, a data scientist with a joint appointment in computer science and genetics at Yale's School of Medicine. Other senior personnel are Profs. Charles Ahn, Diana Qiu, Jan Schroers, Udo Schwarz, and Cong Su as well as Dr. Jennifer Claydon.
There are five required courses in the program, including courses in quantum mechanics, data science, and solid state physics. O'Hern and Ismail-Beigi noted that knowledge of machine learning and data science will enable trainees to enter a new, evolving, and important area of scientific inquiry and gain technical skills for their future careers.
Students in the program will also be required to maintain a communications portfolio, which will include both submissions of scientific articles, as well as writing for general audiences, such as newspaper articles, and oral presentations. The program will feature workshops dedicated to training students in science communication to a wide range of audiences.
Shankar is the Josiah Willard Gibbs Professor of Physics and Professor of Applied Physics at Yale. After getting his B. Tech degree in Electrical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, he went to UC Berkeley to obtain his PhD in Elementary Particle Physics, specializing on S-matrix theory. Following three years as a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows, he joined the Yale physics faculty in 1977 and has remained there ever since, serving as its chair between 2001-2007.
He is a compulsive pedagogue who has given public lectures on relativity and quantum mechanics. His Open Yale Courses on Introductory Physics, available in You Tube, have had over 40 million hits (with subtitles in China). He has written 5 books: Principles of Quantum Mechanics and Basic Training in Mathematics (Springer), Fundamentals of Physics I and II (Yale Press) and Field Theory and Quantum Mechanics (Cambridge). His books have been translated into Polish, Greek and Chinese. He was awarded the A.P. Sloan Fellowship, the Harwood Burns-Richard Sewell teaching prize from Yale and the Lilienfeld Prize of the American Physical Society.
He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and was a Visiting Professor at the Ecole Normale Superieure, Simons Professor KITP Santa Barbara , and Distinguished Visiting Professor the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.
He has served on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Statistical Physics, the Dannie Heineman Prize Committee, the Committee of Visitors at the National Science Foundation, as a Trustee of and Executive Committee member of the Aspen Center of Physics, on the Advisory Board for the Center for Correlated Electrons and Magnetism, Augsburg, and the Lilienfeld Prize Committee of the APS.
Interview with Robert Schoelkopf, Sterling Professor of Applied Physics and Physics at Yale, and director of the Yale Quantum Institute. Schoelkopf describes the origins of the Quantum Institute and the longer history of quantum research at Yale, and he recounts his childhood in Manhattan and then in Chappaqua as the son of art dealers. He describes his early interests in science and tinkering, and his undergraduate education at Princeton where he worked with Steve Boughn and Jeff Kuhn in the gravity group. Schoelkopf discusses his job at the Goddard Space Flight Center before beginning graduate work at Caltech. He describes his research under the direction of Tom Phillips in detector development for astrophysical applications and Josephson junctions, and he explains his ambition to focus on developing devices. Schoelkopf discusses his postdoctoral research at Yale to work with Dan Prober on mesascopic physics, and he explains his involvement in microwave research for quantum information and his explorations into the limits of electrometry. He discusses the opportunities that led to his faculty appointment at Yale, his involvement in building qubits and what this would portend for the future of quantum information. Schoelkopf describes the formative influence of Michel Devoret and Steve Girvin and he explains how these collaborations contributed to upending some aspects of theoretical quantum information. He describes how qubit research has matured over the past twenty years and how this research has contributed to industry and commercial ventures, but why he remains focused on basic science within a university setting. At the end of the interview, Schoelkopf predicts some of the practical contributions that true quantum computing can offer society and why he is excited about the next generation of quantum information scientists.
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