Quantum science with ultracold molecules

Michał Tomza is a university professor and head of the Quantum Molecular Systems research group and the Centre for Atomic Molecular and Optical Physics at the University of Warsaw. He specialises in the theory of interactions and collisions of ultracold atoms, ions, and molecules controlled with electromagnetic fields and their application in quantum science. He finished his PhD in quantum chemistry and theoretical physics in Warsaw, Poland, and in Kassel, Germany, in 2014. Next, he was a postdoctoral researcher in Vancouver, Canada, and in Barcelona, Spain. Since 2017, he has led his research group at the University of Warsaw. He has also conducted research as a visiting scientist at several institutions in Europe and the US. He has realised research grants awarded by the European Research Council (ERC) and Polish grant agencies. He is a member of the Polish Young Academy at the Polish Academy of Sciences.

Dr Alex Guttridge is a postdoctoral researcher at Durham University, whose research centres on quantum science with ultracold atoms and molecules. During his PhD, he produced the first ultracold mixtures of Cs and Yb atoms and studied their interactions through photoassociation spectroscopy of CsYb molecules. Currently, he leads a project that focusses on creating ultracold RbCs molecules in optical tweezers, which are formed from individually trapped Rb and Cs atoms. Recently, he has expanded his research to study hybrid systems of molecules and Rydberg atoms trapped in optical tweezer arrays, where he leads the investigation of this system as a researcher Co-I on the EPSRC funded project 'Interfacing Ultracold Polar Molecules with Rydberg atoms'.

Ana Maria Rey obtained her bachelor’s degree in Physics in 1999 from the Universidad de los Andes in Bogota, Colombia. She pursued her graduate studies at the University of Maryland, College Park, receiving a PhD in 2004. She then joined the Institute of Theoretical, Molecular and Optical Physics at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics as a Postdoctoral Fellow from 2005 to 2008. She joined JILA, NIST and the University of Colorado Boulder faculty in 2008. She is currently a JILA fellow and an associate research professor in the Department of Physics. Rey’s research focuses on how to control and manipulate ultra-cold atoms, molecules and trapped ions for use as quantum simulators of solid state materials and for quantum information and precision measurements. Rey’s recognition to her work include the APS Physics Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award, the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.

Xin-Yu Luo obtained his PhD degree from the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Science, in 2013. He has been a senior scientist leading the NaK molecules lab at the Max-Planck-Institute for Quantum Optics since 2018. He has been focusing on experiments of quantum manipulation and precision measurements with ultracold atoms and polar molecules. His current research interest is to understand and control the collisions of ultracold polar molecules and, subsequently, investigate strongly interacting dipolar quantum many-body systems.

John Doyle, Henry B Silsbee Professor of Physics, Harvard University, grew up in the US and received his bachelor’s (1986) and PhD (1991) degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.). After being a postdoc at M.I.T., he joined Harvard University as an assistant professor of physics in 1993. John Doyle's research centres on using cold molecules for science including particle physics, collisions, and quantum information. Starting with the development a new technique for producing heavy, polar radical molecules in an intense cold beam, he launched with collaborators searches for physics beyond the Standard Model (BSM) through probing for the electron electric dipole moment. His group is a pioneer in the cooling and trapping of molecules, studying collisional processes in atoms and molecules and developing tools to achieve full quantum control over increasingly complex molecular systems. They pioneered the laser cooling of polyatomic molecules and are working to realize new techniques to trap and study interactions in polyatomic molecules. John Doyle is the co-Director of the Harvard Quantum Initiative, director of the Japanese Undergraduate Research Exchange Program (JUREP), and he co-founded the Harvard/MIT Centre for Ultracold Atoms, where for twenty years he was co-director. He has published papers in the areas of ultracold atoms, molecules, spectroscopy, precision measurement, ultracold neutrons, respiratory disease transmission mitigation, and dark matter detection and supervised the PhDs of over thirty students. He is a Humboldt, Fulbright, and American Physical Society (APS) Fellow and a winner of the APS Broida prize and was elected president of the APS for 2025 (vice-president in 2023). 

Dr Parul Aggarwal is a postdoctoral research associate working on the laser cooling and trapping of YO molecules in the group of Professor Jun Ye at JILA, University of Colorado Boulder, USA. She did her PhD work in the group of Professor Steven Hoekstra at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. During her PhD, she worked on the production and Stark deceleration of molecular beams for an experiment aiming to make a precise measurement of an electron’s electric dipole moment. Dr Aggarwal did her Master’s research project on the study of Electromagnetically Induced Transparency in Rubidium atoms under the supervision of Professor Ajay Wasan at the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, India. 

Stephen Hogan is a professor of atomic and molecular physics and head of the Atomic Molecular Optical and Positron Physics group in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at University College London. He received his PhD in 2006 from Imperial College London and completed his Habilitation at ETH Zurich in 2012. His research interests centre around experiments with atoms and molecules in high Rydberg states. These include studies of resonant energy transfer in collisions of Rydberg atoms with polar molecules at low temperatures, investigations slow decay processes of cold electrostatically trapped Rydberg molecules, matter-wave interferometry with Rydberg atoms, the development of hybrid interfaces between Rydberg atoms and superconducting microwave circuits, and spectroscopy and tests of antimatter gravity with Rydberg positronium atoms.

Simon L. Cornish is a Professor in the Department of Physics at Durham University working in the Quantum Light and Matter research group. He was educated at Oxford University where he received his PhD in experimental atomic physics in 1998. He developed an interest in ultracold gases at the University of Colorado, where he undertook pioneering experiments on Bose-Einstein condensation with tunable interactions. His current research focusses on the study of ultracold polar molecules formed by associating pairs of ultracold atoms, inspired by the prospect of using molecules as a platform for quantum simulation and quantum computation.  He leads a national research program in the UK focused on the study of quantum science with ultracold molecules and was awarded the 2019 Institute of Physics Joseph Thomson medal and prize for outstanding contributions to experiments on ultracold atoms and molecules.

Lawrence Cheuk received his Bachelor's degree in physics from Princeton University in 2010 and his PhD in atomic physics from MIT in 2017 focusing on quantum gas microscopy of strongly correlated fermionic systems. He subsequently moved to Harvard University as a Max-Planck/Harvard Quantum Optics postdoctoral fellow working on laser-cooled molecules. In 2020, he joined the physics faculty at Princeton University as an assistant professor. His current research interests lie in advancing control techniques for laser-cooled molecules and using molecules as a new platform for quantum science. He is an Alfred P. Sloan fellow and his research is supported by the NSF.

Ana Maria Rey obtained her bachelor’s degree in Physics in 1999 from the Universidad de los Andes in Bogota, Colombia. She pursued her graduate studies at the University of Maryland, College Park, receiving a PhD in 2004. She then joined the Institute of Theoretical, Molecular and Optical Physics at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics as a Postdoctoral Fellow from 2005 to 2008. She joined JILA, NIST and the University of Colorado Boulder faculty in 2008. She is currently a JILA fellow and an associate research professor in the Department of Physics. Rey’s research focuses on how to control and manipulate ultra-cold atoms, molecules and trapped ions for use as quantum simulators of solid state materials and for quantum information and precision measurements. Rey’s recognition to her work include the APS Physics Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award, the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.

Silke Ospelkaus studied physics at the University of Bonn and received her PhD in the field of ultracold atomic quantum gas mixtures from the University of Hamburg. With a Feodor Lynen Fellowship of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, she went to JILA, NIST and University of Colorado, USA as a postdoc in the group of Professor D Jin and Professor J Ye, where she worked on the preparation of ultracold molecular quantum gases from ultracold atomic quantum gas mixtures by means of a controlled chemical reaction. Subsequently, she was a Minerva group leader at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in the department of Professor I Bloch. Since 2011 she is Professor of Experimental Physics at Leibniz Universität Hannover, where she works on the preparation and control of molecular quantum gases.

Hannah Price is a Royal Society University Research Fellow and a Proleptic Reader in Theoretical Physics at the University of Birmingham. Prior to arriving in Birmingham, she was a PhD student at the University of Cambridge and a postdoctoral researcher and Marie Skłodowska–Curie fellow at the INO-CNR BEC Center at the University of Trento, Italy. Her research group investigates the quantum simulation of topological phases of matter and quantum many-body states in platforms including ultracold atoms, molecules, photonics and mechanical systems.

Mike Tarbutt is Professor of Experimental Physics at Imperial College London. He was educated at the University of Oxford where he received his PhD in 2001 for spectroscopic studies of highly charged ions. After postdoctoral work at the University of Sussex, he moved to Imperial and was awarded a University Research Fellowship from the Royal Society. He leads a research group focussed on laser-cooled molecules and their applications in quantum science and tests of fundamental physics. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and was awarded the 2022 Institute of Physics Joseph Thomson Medal and Prize.