School of Physics Colloquium

Abstract: Harnessing the behavior of complex systems is at the heart of quantum technologies. Precisely engineered ultracold gases are emerging as a powerful tool for this task. In this talk I will explain how ultracold strontium atoms trapped by light can be used to create optical lattice clocks – the most precise timekeepers ever imagined. I am going to explain why these clocks are not only fascinating, but of crucial importance since they can help us to answer cutting-edge questions about complex many-body phenomena and magnetism, to unravel big mysteries of our universe and to build the next generation of quantum technologies.

Bio: Professor Ana María Rey is a Fellow of JILA, a NIST Fellow, and a Professor Adjoint at the Department of Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder. She received a B.S. from Universidad de los Andes, in Bogota-Colombia, and a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland. Between 2005 and 2008, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, after which she joined the faculty at JILA and UC Boulder. Rey’s research interests are in the scientific interface between atomic, molecular and optical physics, condensed matter physics and quantum information science. She has been the recipient of various awards, including the DAMOP Thesis Prize (2005), a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (2013), the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (2013), the Maria Goeppert Mayer Award of the American Physical Society (2014), and the Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists (2019). Rey is also a Fellow of the American Physical Society.