Center: Center for Ultracold Atoms

Understanding, controlling, and harnessing increasingly complex many-body quantum systems is an important frontier of science, and is essential for the development of new materials and the advance of quantum information science. Elucidating how microscale physics determines the macroscale behavior of quantum systems is one of the grand, open questions of modern science and a physics frontier. The Center for Ultracold Atoms (CUA) is a joint effort between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University with the goal of creating, controlling, and studying intentional complexity in quantum systems. The CUA addresses this fundamental challenge in a collaborative and synergistic manner, using systems where the properties and interactions of particles at the microscopic scale are well understood, accurately quantified, and highly controllable at the quantum level. The CUA will also advance education and outreach with a broad portfolio of activities aimed at both the scientific community and the general public. The core outreach program, EngageCUA, extends participation in these activities to the whole CUA community. The CUA research activities are divided into four major areas. The first area focuses on quantum gases of atoms and molecules and aims at expanding control over many-body systems in multiple directions, including long-range forces and novel geometries (bilayer systems, frustrated lattices, gauge fields). The second area is programmable arrays of Rydberg atoms and molecules. They will be used to explore highly-entangled phases of matter, to perform fundamental research on error correction, and to pursue new applications, e.g., to quantum chemistry. The third area exploits atom-like and hybrid systems, including spin defects and trapped electrons and excitons in two-dimensional geometries. These solid-state systems will enable quantum simulations with strong interactions and new applications in sensing and metrology. The fourth area focuses on strongly coupled atoms and photons. The larger goal is to enable new capabilities for engineering many-body states of atoms and photons, with applications in quantum nonlinear optics, quantum metrology, and networking. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.