We are an experimental ultracold atomic physics group in the Physics department at UC Santa Barbara. Our group uses quantum degenerate gases of lithium and strontium to explore a wide variety of quantum mechanical phenomena. Research interests include nonequilibrium quantum dynamics, quantum emulation of ultrafast phenomena, quantum quasicrystals, Floquet engineering, anyon synthesis, and quantum metrology.
Weld Group Updates
The Weld group is excited to be participating in the new DOE-supported Quantum Science Center, of which David is the co-design lead for quantum simulation.
In collaboration with our CAIQuE colleagues at Berkeley, UCLA, and elsewhere, we're thrilled to be part of a new computing-focused Quantum Leap Challenge Institute supported by the National Science Foundation.
Our paper studying connections between transport and Poincaré orbit topology in inhomogeneous driven lattices has been published as a Rapid Communication in Phys. Rev. Research. See also this nice news article on the result.
Congrats to Alec and Max on being named Goldwater Scholars! The Weld group is tied with Princeton University for 2020 Goldwater Scholarships.
Alec's paper on non-exponential decay has been published in Zeitschrift für Naturforschung A as an invited contribution to a special issue on "Physics of Non-Equilibrium Systems."
Our paper reporting phasonic spectroscopy of a tunable quantum quasicrystal has been published in PRL.
Congratulations to Dr. Cora Fujiwara on a successful dissertation defense! Cora is joining Joseph Thywissen's group at the University of Toronto for a postdoc.
Our paper reporting experimental control and characterization of Floquet prethermalization has been published in
Congratulations to Dr. Shankari Rajagopal on a successful dissertation defense! Shankari will join the Schleier-Smith group at Stanford for a postdoc.
Congratulations to Dr. Kevin Singh on a successful dissertation defense! Kevin is joining the Bernien group at U Chicago for a postdoc.
Our paper reporting Floquet band engineering of long-range transport and direct imaging of Floquet-Bloch bands has been published in Phys. Rev. Letters.
BIFROST, a new ARO-supported multi-user distributed tunable laser facility, is up and running (article). This unique instrument was conceived and commissioned by the Weld group in collaboration with 8 other UCSB experimental groups.
Congratulations to Dr. Ruwan Senaratne on a successful dissertation defense! Ruwan will join the Hulet group at Rice as a postdoc.
Our paper reporting the experimental realization of a relativistic harmonic oscillator has been published in New Journal of Physics. Now featuring a video abstract by Cora!
The lithium team's paper describing the experimental observation and uses of position-space Bloch oscillations (a collaboration with theorists at Lisbon and Paderborn) has been published as an Editor's Selection in Phys. Rev. Letters and spotlighted with a commentary on the APS Physics website.
Ruwan and Shankari's paper on experimental quantum simulation of ultrafast dynamics with ultracold strontium has been published in Nature Communications.
Our collaborative project with Sumita Pennathur's group recently demonstrated a new class of energy harvester. The paper has been published in Phys. Rev. Applied.
Congratulations to Dr. Zachary Geiger on a successful dissertation defense! Zach will be joining the technology development team at Intel.
Motivated graduate students and postdoctoral researchers interested in working with our group should email David Weld.