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In a recent Science paper, researchers led by JILA and NIST Fellow Jun Ye, along with collaborators JILA and NIST Fellow David Nesbitt, scientists from the University of Nevada, Reno, and Harvard University, observed novel ergodicity-breaking in C60, a highly symmetric molecule composed of 60 carbon atoms arranged on the vertices of a “soccer ball” pattern (with 20 hexagon faces and 12 pentagon faces). Their results revealed ergodicity breaking in the rotations of C60. Remarkably, they found that this ergodicity breaking occurs without symmetry breaking and can even turn on and off as the molecule spins faster and faster. Understanding ergodicity breaking can help scientists design better-optimized materials for energy and heat transfer.

Around 150 promising inventions are generated annually within the �Ǹ�Թ�. To support these inventions, the Venture Partners at CU �Ǹ�Թ� organization established the Embark Deep Tech Startup Creator, an accelerator program for start-up companies coming out of CU �Ǹ�Թ�. This year, Venture Partners at CU �Ǹ�Թ� announced the Embark Entrepreneurs in Residence cohort. This cohort pairs entrepreneurs with promising inventions.

In the case of JILA, entrepreneur Eva Yao will lead FLARI in bringing to market a breathalyzer capable of detecting molecules in breath or air samples invented by Jun Ye for fast detection of diseases and contaminants.

Ana Maria Rey, a JILA and NIST Fellow, has been honored with the prestigious 2023 Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship from the Department of Defense (DOD). The Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship, named after the visionary American engineer and science administrator, aims to support exceptional researchers with outstanding scientific and technological leadership. It provides recipients substantial financial support over five years, allowing them to pursue innovative and high-impact research endeavors.

Some of the biggest questions about our universe may be solved by scientists using its tiniest particles. Since the 1960s, physicists have been looking at particle interactions to understand an observed imbalance of matter and antimatter in the universe. Much of the work has focused on interactions that violate charge and parity (CP) symmetry. This symmetry refers to a lack of change in our universe if all particles’ charges and orientations were inverted. “This charge and parity symmetry is the symmetry that high-energy physicists say needs to be violated to result in this imbalance between matter and antimatter,” explained JILA research associate Luke Caldwell. To try to find evidence of this violation of CP symmetry, JILA and NIST Fellows Jun Ye and Eric Cornell, and their teams, including Caldwell, collaborated to measure the electron electric dipole moment (eEDM), which is often used as a proxy measure for the CP symmetry violation. The eEDM is an asymmetric distortion of the electron’s charge distribution along the axis of its spin. To try to measure this distortion, the researchers used a complex setup of lasers and a novel ion trap. Their results, published in Science as the cover story and Physical Review A, leveraged a longer experiment time to improve the precision measurement by a factor of 2.4, setting new records.

JILA graduate student Alexander Aeppli is one of a team of researchers working on the world’s most precise clocks. In the laboratory of JILA and NIST Fellow Jun Ye, Aeppli focuses on improving the strontium atomic clock using powerful ultrastable lasers. “The laser drives an electronic transition in strontium,” Aeppli explained. “And we want to make sure the transition within the strontium is exact.” Before the transition occurs, the strontium atoms are trapped within an optical lattice inside the clock. Once trapped, the strontium atoms can transition when exposed to a particular color (or frequency) of light, and the researchers, like Aeppli, measure this transition frequency as a form of timekeeping. The frequency can then be used as the precise standard of time worldwide.

A new approach recently described in Physical Review Letters explores a new way to generate squeezing that is exponentially faster than previous experiments and generates a new flavor of entanglement: two-mode squeezing—a type of entanglement that is thought to be used for improving the best atomic clocks and for sensing how gravity changes the flow of time. This promising new approach was developed by a collaboration of JILA and NIST Fellows Ana Maria Rey and James K. Thompson, and their team members, along with Bhuvanesh Sundar, a former postdoctoral researcher at JILA now at Rigetti Computing, and former JILA research associate Dr. Robert Lewis-Swan, now an Assistant Professor at the University of Oklahoma.

JILA and NIST Fellow, along with University of Colorado Professor Konrad Lehnert will be leading a project through the Department of Defense (DoD) competitive Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) Program. CU �Ǹ�Թ� was matched only by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in receiving three MURI awards.

JILA and NIST Fellows David Nesbitt's and Jun Ye's recent results in their breathalyzer study have been highlighted in a new article in Scientific American. Using frequency combs, a particular type of laser array, scientists could detect specific molecules in the breath, including diseases like COVID-19. This research suggests huge implications for the future of disease diagnosis and prevention.

Election to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is one of the highest honors that can be bestowed upon a scientist in the United States, and it is a mark of recognition for exceptional scientific achievement. This achievement has now been bestowed on JILA and NIST Fellow, along with the �Ǹ�Թ� physics professor Ana Maria Rey, as she was inducted into the NAS in 2023.

�Ǹ�Թ� physics professor Jose D'Incao is the newest researcher to become an Associate Fellow of JILA. As D'Incao's research focuses on ultracold quantum physics, he has often collaborated with other JILA Fellows, like Ana Maria Rey, Eric Cornell, and Jun Ye. Now as a Fellow himself, D'Incao will fit right in with the majority of JILA's Fellows who focus on quantum science.