McKay wins 'best paper' award from DARPA

Physics graduate student David McKay won one of six “best paper” awards on December 8 at the semi-annual Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Optical Lattice Emulator meeting.

McKay, who is a student in Brian DeMarco's research group, was recognized for “Cooling in strongly correlated optical lattices: prospects and challenges,” which will be published in Reports on Progress in Physics.

In the paper, which was co-authored with DeMarco, the authors discuss the promise that cold atoms confined in optical lattices hold as simulators for Hubbard models of strongly correlated materials. However, progress has been hindered by the ultralow temperatures (nanoKelvin) required to reach the regime where exotic phases, such as d-wave superconductivity, could be simulated. The paper identifies sources of heat in optical lattice experiments and reviews existing and proposed thermometry and cooling techniques.

McKay, whose research focuses on investigating the behavior of ultracold (<100 nK) neutral bosons and fermions in optical lattices, has written a popular introduction to his work—Beyond Cold: How the World Works at –459 Degrees.

Physics alumnus David Pekker, now the Lee DuBridge Postdoctoral Fellow in Theoretical Physics at Caltech, also won a “best paper” award.
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Contact: Celia M. Elliott, Department of Physics, 217/244-7725.

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