Gretchen Campbell

Last updated

Gretchen Campbell
Gretchen Campbell among 2014 PECASE winners.jpg
Campbell in 2014
Bornc. 1980 (age 4344)
Alma mater
Known for
Awards
Scientific career
FieldsPhysics
InstitutionsJoint Quantum Institute (NIST / University of Maryland)
Thesis 87Rubidium Bose-Einstein condensates in optical lattices  (2007)
Doctoral advisor
Website https://groups.jqi.umd.edu/campbell/

Gretchen K. Campbell (born c. 1980) [1] is an American atomic, molecular, and optical physicist associated with the National Institute of Standards and Technology. She works in the field of atomtronics and has received awards in recognition of her research contributions on Bose-Einstein condensates. She is currently on detail to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (WHOSTP), where she is the Assistant Director for Quantum Information Science at WHOSTP, and Director of the National Quantum Coordination Office (NQCO) [2] .

Contents

Early life and education

Campbell was raised in western New York state and was curious about science from a young age. [3] She attended Wellesley College for her undergraduate degree, initially intending to train as a veterinarian. However, first-year physics lectures by Glenn Stark and lab mentorship from Theodore W. Ducas shifted her interest toward physics. [4] In particular, she enjoyed the physics problem-solving approach which encouraged logic and reasoning rather than memorisation. [3] Her undergraduate honours thesis was on the topic of optical tweezers. [5] She graduated from Wellesley in 2001, then moved to MIT for her PhD. She studied Bose-Einstein condensates in optical lattices and related quantum phase transitions. She finished her degree in 2007 under the supervision of Wolfgang Ketterle and David Pritchard. [6]

Career and research

Between 2007 and 2009, Campbell was a postdoctoral fellow at JILA in the group of Jun Ye. [6] She worked on some of the world's most accurate atomic clocks based on optical transitions of cooled neutral atoms confined by optical lattices. [7]

In 2009, she moved to become a fellow of the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) affiliation between NIST and the University of Maryland. [4] She became co-director of the institute in 2016. [8] [9] She is part of the Laser Cooling and Trapping group [7] and the Quantum Measurement Division. Campbell manages two laboratories through the JQI collaboration, one at NIST and one on the university campus. [10]

Campbell currently works in atomtronics, an emerging research area into circuitry based on a flow of atoms rather than electrons. She is a leader in the field, with experiments showing promise for applications in sensing or quantum computers. [1] This technology draws on her expertise with Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) by using sodium BEC rings to create superfluid atom circuits analogous to superconductors. [4] These experiments are quantum in nature, as the rotation velocity of the ring trap flow is quantized. Using a laser to "stir" the BEC can cause transitions between eigenstates. [11] Her contributions have included designing a weak link as an additional circuit component and observation of hysteresis effects. [6] She enjoys conducting impactful, tabletop, ultracold experiments. [3]

Her work on BEC may also have implications for research on the early universe. [12] BEC can be described as a "vacuum state for phonons" similar to the quantum field vacuum preceding early universe expansion. Campbell and her collaborator Stephen Eckel are interested to see if their model can provide insight into Hubble friction when a sound wave perturbs the BEC. [13] [12]

Campbell mentors young scientists and manages a group for women in physics at the JQI. [14] [15] She was involved in the 2020 Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics which took place there. [7]

Awards and honours

Personal life

Campbell has a daughter who was born in 2015. [4]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bose–Einstein condensate</span> State of matter

In condensed matter physics, a Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) is a state of matter that is typically formed when a gas of bosons at very low densities is cooled to temperatures very close to absolute zero. Under such conditions, a large fraction of bosons occupy the lowest quantum state, at which microscopic quantum-mechanical phenomena, particularly wavefunction interference, become apparent macroscopically. More generally, condensation refers to the appearance of macroscopic occupation of one or several states: for example, in BCS theory, a superconductor is a condensate of Cooper pairs. As such, condensation can be associated with phase transition, and the macroscopic occupation of the state is the order parameter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Supersolid</span> State of matter

In condensed matter physics, a supersolid is a spatially ordered material with superfluid properties. In the case of helium-4, it has been conjectured since the 1960s that it might be possible to create a supersolid. Starting from 2017, a definitive proof for the existence of this state was provided by several experiments using atomic Bose–Einstein condensates. The general conditions required for supersolidity to emerge in a certain substance are a topic of ongoing research.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fermionic condensate</span> State of matter

A fermionic condensate is a superfluid phase formed by fermionic particles at low temperatures. It is closely related to the Bose–Einstein condensate, a superfluid phase formed by bosonic atoms under similar conditions. The earliest recognized fermionic condensate described the state of electrons in a superconductor; the physics of other examples including recent work with fermionic atoms is analogous. The first atomic fermionic condensate was created by a team led by Deborah S. Jin using potassium-40 atoms at the University of Colorado Boulder in 2003.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Deborah S. Jin</span> American physicist

Deborah Shiu-lan Jin was an American physicist and fellow with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST); Professor Adjunct, Department of Physics at the University of Colorado; and a fellow of the JILA, a NIST joint laboratory with the University of Colorado.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wolfgang Ketterle</span> German physicist

Wolfgang Ketterle is a German physicist and professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His research has focused on experiments that trap and cool atoms to temperatures close to absolute zero, and he led one of the first groups to realize Bose–Einstein condensation in these systems in 1995. For this achievement, as well as early fundamental studies of condensates, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2001, together with Eric Allin Cornell and Carl Wieman.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lene Hau</span> Danish physicist and educator (born 1959)

Lene Vestergaard Hau is a Danish physicist and educator. She is the Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and of Applied Physics at Harvard University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">JILA</span> Physics laboratory in Colorado

JILA, formerly known as the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics, is a physical science research institute in the United States. JILA is located on the University of Colorado Boulder campus. JILA was founded in 1962 as a joint institute of The University of Colorado Boulder and the National Institute of Standards & Technology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rudolf Grimm</span> Austrian physicist (born 1961)

Rudolf Grimm is an experimental physicist from Austria. His work centres on ultracold atoms and quantum gases. He was the first scientist worldwide who, with his team, succeeded in realizing a Bose–Einstein condensation of non-polar molecules.

In condensed matter physics, an ultracold atom is an atom with a temperature near absolute zero. At such temperatures, an atom's quantum-mechanical properties become important.

Atomtronics is an emerging type of computing consisting of matter-wave circuits which coherently guide propagating ultra-cold atoms. The systems typically include components analogous to those found in electronic or optical systems, such as beam splitters and transistors. Applications range from studies of fundamental physics to the development of practical devices.

Markus Greiner is a German physicist and Professor of Physics at Harvard University.

Immanuel Bloch is a German experimental physicist. His research is focused on the investigation of quantum many-body systems using ultracold atomic and molecular quantum gases. Bloch is known for his work on atoms in artificial crystals of light, optical lattices, especially the first realization of a quantum phase transition from a weakly interacting superfluid to a strongly interacting Mott insulating state of matter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tilman Esslinger</span> German physicist

Tilman Esslinger is a German experimental physicist. He is Professor at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, and works in the field of ultracold quantum gases and optical lattices.

Lev Petrovich Pitaevskii was a Russian theoretical physicist, who made contributions to the theory of quantum mechanics, electrodynamics, low-temperature physics, plasma physics, and condensed matter physics. Together with his PhD supervisor Evgeny Lifshitz and with Vladimir Berestetskii, he was also the co-author of a few volumes of the influential Landau–Lifschitz Course of Theoretical Physics series. His academic status was professor.

Bose–Einstein condensation can occur in quasiparticles, particles that are effective descriptions of collective excitations in materials. Some have integer spins and can be expected to obey Bose–Einstein statistics like traditional particles. Conditions for condensation of various quasiparticles have been predicted and observed. The topic continues to be an active field of study.

Sandro Stringari is an Italian theoretical physicist, who has contributed to the theory of quantum many-body physics, including atomic nuclei, quantum liquids and ultra-cold atomic Bose and Fermi gases. He has developed in a systematic way the sum rule approach to the collective behavior of interacting systems.

Bose–Einstein condensation of polaritons is a growing field in semiconductor optics research, which exhibits spontaneous coherence similar to a laser, but through a different mechanism. A continuous transition from polariton condensation to lasing can be made similar to that of the crossover from a Bose–Einstein condensate to a BCS state in the context of Fermi gases. Polariton condensation is sometimes called “lasing without inversion”.

The I. I. Rabi Prize in Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics is given by the American Physical Society to recognize outstanding work by mid-career researchers in the field of atomic, molecular, and optical physics. The award was endowed in 1989 in honor of the physicist I. I. Rabi and has been awarded biannually since 1991.

Francesca Ferlaino is an Italian-Austrian experimental physicist known for her research on quantum matter. She is a professor of physics at the University of Innsbruck.

Kristan Lee Corwin is an American physicist who is a professor and division chief at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Her research considers nonlinear optics and emerging laser systems.

References

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