News

by: Jon Atherton

Enshrined by the laws of Austrian physicists Josef Stefan and Ludwig Boltzmann in the late 19^th Century, scientists have long understood the general principles of heat-energy transfer between the sun and planet Earth.

But at much closer separations, where photons can effectively “tunnel” between two bodies, the maximum rate and size at which two objects – one hot, one cold – can transfer heat has remained unknown.

From their emerging field of near-field nanophotonics, a group of Yale scientists have taken a new step in advancing the ‘Stefan-Boltzmann law’ by creating a mathematical framework to identify the upper bounds of light interactions and radiative energy transfer. Read full article at YaleNews.

By Jon Atherton

The thinnest flake, just one atom thick, has provided scientists at Yale and the Brookhaven National Laboratory with new insight into a promising material for the next generation of high-speed electronics and a host of practical applications. Read full article at YaleNews.

By Bill Hathaway

Four Yale faculty members have been named fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), an honor bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers.

The 416 members have been awarded this honor by the AAAS in recognition of their scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications.

The awardees are: Charles H. Ahn, the William K. Lanman Jr. Professor of Applied Physics and chair of the Department of Applied Physics; Richard G. Bribiescas, professor of anthropology and ecology and evolutionary biology and deputy provost for faculty development and diversity; Christopher G. Burd, professor and deputy chair of cell biology; and Dragomir Radev, the A. Bartlett Giamatti Professor of Computer Science. 

Full article at YaleNews.

Dan Prober received the IEEE Council on Superconductivity award for 2018.

The award given in recognition of  his continuing and significant contributions in the field of superconductive electronics, in particular: 

See more information at IEEE Council on Superconductivity (IEEE CSC).

We are happy to announce the public release of the slave-boson code “BoSS” (Boson Slave Solver) today!  This is a free software avaialble to you to perform slave-boson calculations that include electron correlations for extended Hubbard models.  Software is available at bitbucket.org/yalebosscode/boss/

Yale scientists have created a new type of silicon laser that uses sound waves to amplify light. A study about the discovery appears in the online edition of the journal Science. More on YaleNews.

As a Yale undergraduate, Peter Schiffer ’88 admits he spent more time at the Yale Political Union (YPU) than in the lab. It’s rather ironic that, nearly three decades later, the Piersonite and Progressive Party member has returned to Yale as vice provost for research, a role “intended to support research and scholarship across the entire enterprise and not just science and engineering — the social sciences, the humanities, and the arts.” Read more…

Yale scientists have created a simple-to-produce device that uses sound waves to store quantum information and convert it from one form to another, all inside a single, integrated chip.

The device allows a superconducting artificial atom — a qubit — to exchange energy and quantum information with a high frequency bulk acoustic wave resonator (HBAR). The ability to manipulate and store fragile quantum data in a robust and easy-to-manufacture way is a crucial step in the development of quantum computing technology.

The work is a collaboration at Yale between the labs of Robert Schoelkopf, the Sterling Professor of Applied Physics and Physics, and Peter Rakich, assistant professor of physics. Yiwen Chu, a postdoctoral associate in Schoelkopf’s lab, led the effort and is first author of a study that appears Sept. 21 in the online edition of the journal Science. Read more…

In October 2016, the Yale Quantum Institute launched a Call for Art Proposals to commission quantum physics themed artwork to fill a bare wall at the entrance of the institute. A few months after the call, we received 26 proposals from Yale Students and New Haven based artists. The proposals were all of great quality and we were very impressed by the connection these artists have made with quantum physics, a fairly hard to access subject.

During this review of all the proposals, we invited Martha W Lewis, one of the participating artist, to give a talk about the relationship between her art and science (read the Yale News article about this event). This non-technical talk was co-sponsored by The Franke Program in Science and the Humanities.

 “While scientists have strict guidelines for testing their theories about the universe, artists are free to express ideas without rigorous quantification”, Martha said. “Yet where art and science intersect, is in the use of visual metaphors to represent highly complex or unseen concepts.”

Yale’s Robert Schoelkopf, Sterling Professor of Applied Physics and Physics and director of the Yale Quantum Institute, was awarded the 2017 Connecticut Medal of Science for his seminal contributions to the field of quantum science and to the new field of circuit quantum electrodynamics. The Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering (CASE) announced the honor. Read more…

Yale Researchers have crossed the “break even” point in preserving a bit of quantum information for longer than the lifetime of its constituent parts, as published in Nature.

A novel system has been created to encode, spot errors, decode, and correct errors in a quantum bit, also known as a “qubit.” The development of such a robust method of Quantum Error Correction (QEC) has been one of the biggest remaining hurdles in quantum computation.

See News Reports:

[New Scientist] Error fix for long-lived qubits brings quantum computers nearer

[YQI News] RSL Lab-developed device lengthens the life of quantum information