Research Areas - (443) Physics

Full path: Physics

Department(s)/lab(s): School of Physics | Micolich Nanoelectronics Group @ UNSW
Summary:

Micolich works on semiconductor nanowire and organic/polymer nanoelectronic devices, with two strands relevant here: the physics of low-dimensional transport and noise in nanowire transistors, and the use of those devices as transducers at the interface with biological systems, where a nanowire field-effect transistor acts as an extremely local potentiometer sensitive to charge and potential changes at the cell membrane. The group has a strong record in noise spectroscopy — using 1/f and random telegraph noise as a diagnostic rather than a nuisance. Positioned against the established body of NV-ensemble quantum sensing work — DEER, nanoscale NMR and T1 relaxometry protocols operating at pT/sqrt(Hz) field sensitivity — nanowire FET bioelectronic sensing is the principal electrical competitor to NV-based bio-magnetometry: both aim to read out cellular electrophysiology without patch-clamping, one via magnetic fields at pT/sqrt(Hz), the other via local potential. Borderline inclusion, kept because the bio-interface sensing thread is genuine.

Department(s)/lab(s): Physics / Niels Bohr Institute | Quantum Optoelectronic Devices Group (Midolo) @ UCPH
Summary:

Leonardo Midolo develops III-V optoelectronic quantum devices at NBI. Research: (1) nanomechanical quantum photonic integrated circuits (NOEMS) — GaAs waveguide phase shifters, routers, and switches for single-photon routing; (2) heterogeneous integration of quantum dot emitters on silicon and SiN platforms; (3) quantum key distribution with deterministic single-photon sources over field-installed dark fibre. Group established 2022; Beamfox spinout for proximity correction.

Department(s)/lab(s): Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering | Miller Quantum Biosensing Group @ UCL
Summary:

Miller develops nitrogen-vacancy nanodiamond quantum biosensors for rapid diagnostics, controlling the NV spin state with resonant green/microwave illumination to frequency-separate fluorescence signal from background and achieve single-molecule detection of nucleic acids (e.g. HIV RNA with a short isothermal amplification step) in lateral-flow and widefield formats. His current projects span nanodiamond sensors for point-of-care disease diagnostics, quantum sensing at neural-interface implants, and wide-field quantum sensing of large randomly-oriented nanodiamond ensembles in biological samples, actively recruiting PhD students through the Q-BIOMED hub.

Department(s)/lab(s): Physics | Miller Lab @ UChicago
Summary:

Best known as a collider (ATLAS) physicist, Miller also leads the BREAD collaboration's broadband dish-antenna search for axion dark matter, converting axions to photons inside a solenoid magnet and reading them out with a THz receiver and Fourier-transform spectrometer to cover mass ranges inaccessible to narrowband cavity haloscopes. This is a fundamentally different quantum-sensing strategy than solid-state NV-ensemble magnetometers/thermometers, which reach pT/sqrt(Hz)-class sensitivity via DEER, NMR, and T1-relaxometry protocols on spin ensembles; Miller's approach instead pushes broadband photon-counting sensitivity for fundamental-physics searches. Actively recruiting postdocs for BREAD instrumentation and analysis.

Department(s)/lab(s): Materials Science and Engineering | Minor Group (National Center for Electron Microscopy) @ UCB
Summary:

Minor directs the National Center for Electron Microscopy at LBNL and develops in-situ TEM methods to observe how materials deform, fracture, and transform under mechanical load, temperature, and other stimuli in real time at atomic resolution.

Department(s)/lab(s): Physics | Quantum Optics and Laser Science Group @ Imperial
Summary:

Mintert's theoretical group works on quantum information and quantum control, including protocols to deterministically prepare highly non-classical (non-Gaussian, Wigner-negative) states of massive mechanical oscillators via optomechanical interactions, entanglement quantification, and quantum simulation.

Department(s)/lab(s): Electrical Engineering | Mirhosseini Lab @ Caltech
Summary:

Mirhosseini's group builds hybrid quantum systems that interface superconducting circuits with acoustic and optical modes - circuit quantum acousto-dynamics, phonon-mediated interactions, and microwave-to-optical transduction - for quantum networking and quantum-limited signal transduction. For context, this complements the established paradigm of NV-diamond ensemble magnetometry (Hahn-echo/DEER, nanoscale NMR, T1 relaxometry) operating near pT/√Hz sensitivity.

Department(s)/lab(s): Electrical and Computer Engineering | Mohseni Bio-Inspired Sensors and Optoelectronics Lab @ Northwestern
Summary:

Prof. Mohseni's group (Bio-inspired Sensors and Optoelectronics) pushes III-V semiconductor photodetector technology toward thermodynamic and quantum limits of photon sensitivity. Key directions: (1) Nanoscale IR photodetectors: shrinking pixel dimensions below the diffraction limit using quantum confinement effects (InGaAs/InAlAs quantum well and dot structures) to improve sensitivity, bandwidth, and resolution simultaneously; (2) Superlattice photomultipliers — high-gain, low-noise avalanche photodetectors at room temperature approaching quantum-limited sensitivity for mid-wave and long-wave infrared detection; (3) Quantum sensing applications including squeezed-light-enhanced thermoreflectance imaging of electronic hotspots, and photon-counting receivers for quantum communications. Co-author on 275+ papers, 33+ US patents; NAI Fellow 2023; W.M. Keck Foundation Award, DARPA YFA, NSF CAREER. Fellow of SPIE and Optica. Also Professor of Physics and Astronomy.

Department(s)/lab(s): Applied Physics | Moler Group @ Stanford
Summary:

Moler's lab builds scanning SQUID microscopes -- magnetic-flux sensors cooled to cryogenic temperatures and scanned within microns of a sample -- to image supercurrents, vortices, and interfacial magnetism in unconventional superconductors and topological materials with sensitivity and spatial resolution that complements ensemble NV-diamond magnetometry (which reaches pT/√Hz via DEER/T1-type protocols) at a very different length and field scale.

Department(s)/lab(s): Physics and Astronomy (AMOPP) | Monteiro Theoretical Quantum Optomechanics Group @ UCL
Summary:

Monteiro works on the theory and control of levitated optomechanical systems, including a stable 3D velocity feedback cooling scheme for independently controlling all three translational modes of an optically levitated nanoparticle with minimal cross-talk. Levitated optomechanics of this kind is being developed both as a force/impulse sensor of exquisite sensitivity and, in collaboration with UCL colleagues including Peter Barker, as a testbed for macroscopic quantum states relevant to proposed gravity-entanglement experiments.