2024 Dalgarno Memorial Lectures (Prof. Jun Ye)

Monday, February 5, 2024 - 4:30 PM
Physics Colloquium, Jefferson 250
"Celebrating Dalgarno's Serendipitous Journey - Building atomic clocks for fundamental physics."
Professor Dalgarno’s pioneering journey through the deep connections between AMO and fundamental physics has profoundly impacted the way we build devices such as an atomic clock. Scaling up the size of coherent quantum systems advances the frontier of precision measurement, and quantum entanglement is poised to make important impact in the near term. Quantum science is revolutionizing today’s atomic clocks and metrology, providing opportunities to probe fundamental physics and explore emerging quantum phenomena. Recent advances include precise control of atomic interactions to achieve high accuracy, determination of the gravitational time dilation across a few hundred micrometers, and employment of spin entanglement for clock comparison.
Zoom: https://harvard.zoom.us/j/97336664192?pwd=djdScXMzL2JYMTFZUlU4VHcwWHZNQT09

Tuesday, February 6, 2024 - 1:30 PM
CFA Colloquium, Phillips Auditorium - 60 Garden St.
"Quantum degenerate gas of polar molecules
In his 2001 seminal paper on cold chemistry, Prof. Dalgarno predicted a considerable rate for chemical reaction near zero temperature owing to “tunneling through the repulsive barrier”. His vision inspired a vibrant development of the field of ultracold molecules and was fully validated when a molecular gas was brought into the quantum regime, where ultracold collisions and chemical reactions were shown to be governed by quantum statistics and long-range interactions.
Quantum degerate gas of molecules sets the stage to explore novel dynamics. External electric fields are used to tune elastic interactions, suppress reactive losses, produce sharp collision resonances, and control evaporative cooling. Confining molecules in optical traps with various spatial geometries allows realization of stereo chemistry and construction of tunable many-body spins for quantum magnetism. Hamiltonian engineering is paving the way for production of entangled molecules that will benefit precision measurement.
Zoom: https://smithsonian.zoom.us/j/85917721926?pwd=enFzUlNYN1RrNFpNL2JNUW5KMn...

Thursday, February 8, 2024 - 10:00 AM
Pierce Hall 301
"Molecules under new light"
Prof. Dalgarno was always facinated with observations made under increasingly refined resolution. Indeed, new tools of light give rise to new opportunties for observation and control of molecules, allowing us to study complex structure and emergent quantum properties, to set new bounds for fundamental symmetry, to probe real-time reaction kinetics, and to apply molecular sensing for medical diagnosis.

The Dalgarno Memorial Lectures: https://lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/itamp-lectures/dalgarno-memorial-lectures