Highlights of peer-reviewed publications from macQsimal

During the last few months, several papers from macQsimal researchers have been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. One highlight is the paper by Jia Kong and co-workers (ICFO) in Nature Communications. In this work, they show that entanglement between atoms, a fundamental feature of quantum technologies, might be more stable than expected. Their results show that entanglement could indeed be used to improve the sensitivity of optically pumped magnetometers (OPM), as targeted by macQsimal. Such ultra-sensitive devices could have far-reaching implications for example in magnetic brain imaging and neuroscience in general (see also the coverage of this paper in ‘Hot and messy’ entanglement of 15 trillion atoms on phys.org).

An additional highlight that gained substantial attention was the publication by Lucy A. Downes and her colleagues at Durham University in Physics Review X on full-field Terahertz imaging at Kilohertz frame rates (see figure above, showing frames of THz videos of (a) a rotating optical chopper wheel and (b) a water droplet in free fall). Its implications are also illustrated in the Physics focus story ‘Green Light for Terahertz Movies’.
Finally, we would like to highlight the publication by Johannes Schmidt and coworkers at the University of Stuttgart on an optogalvanic gas sensor based on Rydberg excitations. Their work shows that the proposed gas detection scheme has many advantages compared to already existing sensing technologies without apparent drawbacks.

All of these papers and five further peer-reviewed publications are available in Open Access and they are listed on the macQsimal website under Publications.