Center: JILA-PFC: Comprehension and Control of Emerging Complexity at the Quantum Frontier

The Physics Frontiers Centers (PFC) award to the JILA-PFC will develop and enhance control over light-matter interactions to advance investigations of an array of quantum systems of increasing size and complexity, ranging from assemblies of ultracold atoms and molecules to real materials and biological systems. In pursuit of these advances, the center will develop and apply a broad range of state-of-the-art light sources, including sources of highly non-classical light, vacuum ultraviolet lasers and single-photon sources, while simultaneously striving to improve cooling and measurement techniques.

These new tools will permit researchers to shed light on open questions in many-body physics relevant to disciplines ranging from atomic, molecular, and optical (AMO) physics, to condensed matter physics, chemistry, and biology, and to advance frontier precision measurements targeting issues in fundamental physics. The center program will also provide graduate students and postdoctoral scholars with cutting-edge expertise in Atomic, Molecular, and Optical (AMO) related physics, and it will develop tools and techniques to enhance the Nation's technological infrastructure.

The JILA-PFC will contribute to connecting scientific communities by hosting workshops and schools and through the JILA visitor program and will continue its highly successful education and outreach efforts to attract the next generation of all students into science.

The JILA-PFC research is organized around four interconnected major activities that are in turn built upon closely intertwined aspects of AMO physics. The first will focus on the understanding and manipulation of interactions between quantum particles, from pristine arrays of ultracold atoms and molecules manipulated at the level of individual constituent particles, to complex materials studied via ultrafast probes.

The second will broadly advance the frontier of light-science and light-matter interactions via the development of novel light sources. The third will seek to control quantum states of increasingly complex molecules for practical and fundamental applications including searches for new physics beyond the standard model. The fourth area seeks opportunities to exchange ideas and technologies that could lead to projects outside of the central focus of the JILA-PFC, but which would benefit either the core work of the PFC or other areas of science.

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.