• Dec 2021: Our paper on superradiance & quantum memory is posted to the arxiv: Superradiance-mediated photon storage for broadband quantum memory

• Dec 2021: After COVID-related visa delays, both visiting professor Dr. Andal Narayanan and new PhD student Daniel Schneider Grun arrive in Edmonton, just in time for winter -- Welcome!

• October 2021: Andrei's final PhD paper is submitted and posted to the arxiv:

  •  Engineering atomic polarization with microwave-assisted optical pumping

• Sept 2021: Nicholas Milson joins the group as an MSc student and Bahar Babaei joins as a Research Assistant: Welcome!

• Fall 2021: Inka Kennepohl and Julieta Hernandez join the lab for Phys 499 projects: Welcome!

• 22 July 2021: Brittany successfully defends her MSc thesis.  Congratulations!

• May 2021: Anna Prus-Czarnecka and Sarah Amaneddine join the lab for the summer. Welcome!

• 11 May 2021: Andrei successfully defends his PhD Thesis, "Manipulating optical properties of rubidium through microwave interactions".  Congratulations, Dr. Tretiakov!

• April 2021: Microwave polymers paper submitted to the arxiv: 

  • Polymer-loaded three dimensional microwave cavities for hybrid quantum systems by Myles Ruether, Clinton A Potts, John P Davis, and LJL

• March 2021: Our BEC-memory paper is accepted in New Journal of Physics

  •  Storing short single-photon-level optical pulses in Bose-Einstein condensates for high-performance quantum memory. New J. Phys. 23 043028 (2021), by Erhan Saglamyurek, Taras Hrushevskyi, Anindya Rastogi, Logan W. Cooke, Benjamin D. Smith, and LJL

• Jan 2021: Tian Ooi returns for a second co-op term -- welcome back!

• October 2020: Two new papers submitted to the arxiv: 

  • GPU-accelerated solutions of the nonlinear Schrödinger equation by Benjamin D. Smith, Logan W. Cooke, and LJL

  •  Storing short single-photon-level optical pulses in Bose-Einstein condensates for high-performance quantum memory. by Erhan Saglamyurek, Taras Hrushevskyi, Anindya Rastogi, Logan W. Cooke, Benjamin D. Smith, and LJL

• August 2020: Michelle and James successfully defend their MSc theses -- Congratulations!  

  • M A Sullivan, A Cold Atoms Apparatus for a New Hybrid Quantum System

  • J B Maldaner, Towards a monolithic process for open-access Fabry-Perot etalon cavities

• July 2020: A nice writeup on our recent work with warm atoms and microwave cavities from the Faculty of Science "Transforming information from microwaves to optical light"

• July 2020: Joey Lindon joins the group as our newest MSc student: welcome!

• May 2020: Amid a global pandemic, Myles Ruether, Tian Ooi, Jacob Byers, and Satchel Armena join the group for the summer: welcome to all!

• Jan 2020: Our first paper in collaboration with the Davis group using a microwave cavity to enhance coupling in a vapour cell is posted to the arxiv [arxiv.2001.03150] and is published in April: Tretiakov, C. A. Potts, T. S. Lee, M. J. Thiessen, J. P. Davis, L. J. LeBlanc. Appl. Phys. Lett. 116, 164101 (2020)[Journal Link][arxiv.2001.03150]

• Jan 2020: Jayke Boghean returns for a second co-op term.

• Dec 2019: Dr. Arina Tashchilina joins the group as a Postdoctoral Fellow after completing her PhD at the University of Calgary.  Welcome!

• Sept 2019: Brittany Lu joins the group as our newest MSc student: Welcome!

• Sept 2019: UAlberta Physics plays host to the 2019 Quantum Fluids and Solids Conference, including some exciting talks from our experimental ultracold atoms colleagues, including: Monika Aidelsburger, Tobias Donner, Tim Langen, Manfred Mark, Giovanni Modugno, Joseph Thywissen, and Martin Zweirlein.

• May 2019: Our paper on Autler-Townes memory at the single-photon level is submitted and available on the arxiv [arxiv:1905.05856].

• May 2019: Inka Kennepohl, Jayke Boghean, and Myles Ruether join the lab for the summer: Welcome!

• 23 April 2018: Jacques Thibault successfully defended his MSc thesis "Micro-wire Magnetic Trap Chips for use in Ultracold Atom Experiments."  Congratulations!  

• Feb 2019: Two new papers are on the arxiv.  Congratulations on the hard work, all!

  • Andrei’s theoretical and experimental work on "Microwave Rabi resonances beyond the small-signal regime” [arxiv: 1902:01971]

  • Anindya and Erhan’s theoretical and experimental work on "Discerning quantum memories based on electromagnetically-induced-transparency and Autler-Townes-splitting protocols,” [arxiv:1902:02815], with contributions from Taras and Scott H.

• Nov 2018: Our paper, “Coherent storage and manipulation of broadband photons via dynamically controlled Autler-Townes splitting” describing our first experiments in optical quantum memory is published (online) in Nature Photonics.  See also Katie Willis' short summary of this work.

• Sept 2018: Michelle Sullivan joins the lab as an MSc student, and Anindya Rastogi continues on as a PhD in the group.  Welcome!

• May 2018: Undergraduates Scott Hubele, Timothy Lee, and Daniel To join the lab as summer NSERC USRA/co-op researchers. Welcome!

• 23 April 2018: Anindya Rastogi successfully defended his MSc thesis "Light-Matter Interactions in Ultracold Gases for Quantum Simulation and Quantum Memory Experiments"  Congratulations!  

• November 2017: The NSERC CREATE program “Quanta” is announced, and we’re happy to be a part of it!  More information at: https://www.cms.ualberta.ca/science/programs/create/quanta

• October 2017: Our arxiv preprint "Coherent storage and manipulation of broadband photons via dynamically controlled Autler-Townes splitting” is posted.  

• Sept 2017: James Maldaner, jointly supervised with Ray DeCorby in ECE, joins the group.  Welcome!

• May 2017: Undergraduates Carter Trautmann and Taryn Haluza-DeLay join the lab.  Welcome!

• 16 February 2017: The group’s newest (unofficial) member arrives — Lillian Grace (Lily) is born at 3400 g and 51 cm.

• 30 January 2017: Taras Hrushevskyi successfully defended his MSc thesis "Quantum gas apparatus for Bose-Einstein condensation of 87Rb”  Congratulations!  

• January 2017: Some publicity about our first BECs — making Edmotnon the coldest city in the world to have them.  From the Edmonton Journal (with video interview) and the Faculty of Science.

• 08 December 2016: Andrei Tretiakov successfully defended his MSc thesis “Versatile apparatus for ultracold hybrid atomic systems.”  Congratulations!  Andrei will be here in the new year as a PhD student in our group.

• 01 December 2016: The Honourable Amarjeet Sohi, Federal Minister for Infrastructure and Communities, comes by the lab for a quick tour with UAlberta Vice-President, Research, Dr. Lorne Babiuk.  Looking through the IR viewer to see a MOT… (photo credits: Phillipe Renoir)

• November 2016: BEC! After optimizing our apparatus, those first hints of BEC we saw back in May have been confirmed - we can reproducibly create BECs with temperatures down to about 40nK!

Our first Bose-Einstein condensates, now in video format!  Over the past several months, we have seen the first hints of Bose-condensation in our gases of 87Rb atoms, and after lots of hard work and optimization, we reliably produce these gases down to about 40 nK. Left: The density profile of the gas as it cools from about 300 nK to 40 nK.  Right: releasing the cloud from an anistropic trap (elongated vertically), the cloud’s expansion in time of flight shows an inversion of this aspect ratio, indicating that these atoms are in their ground state.

• September 2016: New graduate students Logan Cooke, Ben Smith, and Jacques Thibault join the lab.  Welcome!

• 23-27 May 2016: Andrei, Taras, and Lindsay head to Providence, RI for DAMOP 2016.  Andrei and Taras both present posters about their MSc work.  

• May 2016: Chenxi Huang and Scott Wilson join the lab as Engineering Physics Co-op students, and win an NSERC USRA (Scott) and Departmental Research Award (Chenxi) in support of their work.  Welcome!

• 15-17 March 2016: William Phillips (NIST/JQI) visits to give a public lecture “Time, Einstein, and the Coldest stuff in the universe” and the Umezawa Lecture “Pushing and twisting  atoms with light”

• 25-26 February 2016: Fellow Canadian atom-trapper Joseph Thywissen (UToronto) visits to give colloquium and the CMP Seminar — it’s all about p-waves!

• Jan 2016: Kristen Côté joins the group for her Phys 499 project

• 14 September 2015: First MOT (magneto-optical trap) in the lab!  We cooled some rubidium atoms down to microkelvin temperatures.

• September 2015: Anindya Ragosti joins the lab as a MSc student, and Ketty Na and Christan Prosko start their Phys 499 projects.  Welcome!

• 1 July 2015: Dr. Erhan Saglamyurek joins the lab as our first post-doc.  Welcome!

• 18 June 2015: Taras and Andrei win first and second honourable mentions in the student poster competition at CAP Congress, and Taras wins best DAMOPC poster!

• 15-19 June 2015: University of Alberta welcomes the annual CAP Congress to Edmonton!

• 4-9 May 2015: Taras, Andrei, and Lindsay visit sunny Vancouver for the CIFAR Quantum Materials Summer School and Meeting

• 28 April 2015: Lab renovations near completion — we start moving into our new (temperature controlled) space!

• January, March 2015: Lindsay travels to Lethbridge, Thunder Bay, and Winnipeg to participate in the 2015 CAP Lecture Tour and presents "Exploring the Secrets of Many-Particle Quantum Systems Using Laser-Cooled Quantum Gases”

• 25-26 Sept 2014: Aephraim Steinberg visits UAlberta for the Graduate research symposium

• 22 Sept 2014: Boris Braverman visits to tell us about spin-squeezed atomic clocks

• Sept 2014: M.Sc. students Taras Hrushevski and Andrei Tretiakov join the lab — welcome!