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Researchers at JILA, led by Ana Maria Rey, developed a new protocol for teleporting quantum information in collective spin states of ions within a two-dimensional crystal. This involves entangling ion groups through phonon modes and using measurements to transfer quantum states. The protocol, successfully simulated with up to 300 ions, shows potential for quantum networks and distributed quantum sensing.

Understanding how molecules interact with ions is a cornerstone of chemistry, with applications from pollution detection and cleanup to drug delivery. In a series of new studies led by JILA Fellow and �Թ��� of Colorado Boulder chemistry professor Mathias Weber, researchers explored how a specific ion receptor called octamethyl calix[4]pyrrole (omC4P) binds to different anions, such as fluoride or nitrate. These findings provide fundamental insights about molecular binding that could help advance fields such as environmental science and synthetic chemistry.

Dr. Olivia Krohn, a former JILA graduate student and now a postdoctoral researcher at Sandia National Laboratories, has been awarded the prestigious Justin Jankunas dissertation award, given out by the American Physical Society (APS) division of chemical physics at the APS Global Summit conference. This award recognizes exceptional doctoral research that advances the frontiers of physics. Krohn’s award highlights her dissertation research, which bridges the legacy of JILA’s origins in astrophysics with its current role as a global leader in atomic, molecular, and optical (AMO) physics.

For decades, atomic clocks have been the pinnacle of precision timekeeping, enabling GPS navigation, cutting-edge physics research, and tests of fundamental theories. But researchers at JILA, led by JILA and NIST Fellow and �Թ��� of Colorado Boulder physics professor Jun Ye, in collaboration with the Technical �Թ��� of Vienna, are pushing beyond atomic transitions to something potentially even more stable: a nuclear clock. This clock could revolutionize timekeeping by using a uniquely low-energy transition within the nucleus of a thorium-229 atom. This transition is less sensitive to environmental disturbances than modern atomic clocks and has been proposed for tests of fundamental physics beyond the Standard Model.

​A team of physicists at the �Թ��� of Colorado Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has developed a groundbreaking laser-based device capable of analyzing gas samples to identify a vast array of molecules at extremely low concentrations, down to parts per trillion. Their findings were recently published in Nature.

Researchers led by JILA and NIST Fellows and �Թ��� of Colorado Boulder physics professors Jun Ye and Ana Maria Rey—in collaboration with scientists at the Leibnitz �Թ��� in Hanover, the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and the �Թ��� of Innsbruck—proposed practical protocols to explore the effects of relativity, such as the gravitational redshift, on quantum entanglement and interactions in an optical atomic clock. Their work revealed that the interplay between gravitational effects and quantum interactions can lead to unexpected phenomena, such as atomic synchronization and quantum entanglement among particles.

In a new study published in Physical Review Letters, JILA Fellow and �Թ��� of Colorado Boulder physics professor Cindy Regal, along with former JILA Associate Fellow Jose D’Incao (currently an assistant professor of physics at the �Թ��� of Massachusetts, Boston) and their teams developed new experimental and theoretical techniques for studying the rates at which light-assisted collisions occur in the presence of small atomic energy splittings. Their results rely upon optical tweezers—focused lasers capable of trapping individual atoms—that the team used to isolate and study the products of individual pairs of atoms.

Researchers at the �Թ��� of Colorado Boulder have developed a novel method to measure magnetic field orientations using atoms as minuscule compasses. The research, a collaboration between JILA Fellow and CU Boulder physics professor Cindy Regal and Svenja Knappe, a research professor in the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering, was recently published as the cover article in the journal Optica.

Congratulations to JILA graduate students Anya Grafov and Iona Binnie—who conduct their cutting-edge research in the laboratory of JILA Fellows and the �Թ��� of Colorado Boulder professors Margaret Murnane and Henry Kapteyn—for their outstanding achievements at the MMM Intermag 2025 conference!

In a recent study published in Physical Review Letters, Rey and JILA and NIST Fellow James K. Thompson, along with graduate student Sanaa Agarwal and researcher Asier Piñeiro Orioli from the �Թ��� of Strasbourg, studied atom-light interactions in the case of effective four-level atoms, two ground (or metastable) and two excited levels arranged in specific one-dimensional and two-dimensional crystal lattices.