Awschalom Group

Spin Dynamics and Quantum Information Processing in the Solid State

Our group is primarily concerned with understanding electron and nuclear spin dynamics in semiconductors and engineering quantum states for information processing and sensing applications. Our experimental program combines quantum optics with electron-spin resonance, materials engineering, and nanofabrication. We are focused on developing experimental tools and uncovering new systems that could expand the technological impact of quantum coherence in the solid state. Certain point defects in semiconductors, such as the nitrogen vacancy center in diamond or the neutral divacancy in silicon carbide, exhibit long-lived spin coherence that persist up to room temperature. Harnessing these defects as atomic-scale probes of electromagnetic fields promises to lead to nanoscale nuclear magnetic resonance, new tools for bio-sensing, and a better understanding of semiconductor electronics.

To read more about our studies, explore the links below:

Quantum Information Processing in Diamond

The fundamental quantum-mechanical nature of spin makes it an ideal candidate for use as a quantum bit, the basic unit of information in a quantum computing architecture. Individual spins may be initialized, coherently controlled, and read out using a variety of optical and electronic techniques. In particular, point defects in crystals have many analogous properties to atoms trapped in vacuum, including localized electronic states and sharp optical and spin transitions. In certain defects, electronic spin states are insulated from lattice dynamics, leading to long quantum coherence times that persist even up to room temperature.

Spin Control in Silicon Carbide and Other Materials

We are exploring defects in a variety of wide-bandgap materials, such as the divacancy in silicon carbide (SiC). We investigate these defects for both fundamental and applied studies of quantum information processing as well as for developing hybrid quantum systems and nanoscale sensing.

• Jonghoon Ahn
  Argonne-Affiliated Postdoctoral Scholar
• Joseph Blanton
  Graduate Student
• Alexandre Bourassa
  Graduate Student
• Will Burke
  Graduate Student
• Swathi Chandrika
  Graduate Student
• Alex Crook
  Graduate Student
• Pratiti Deb
  Graduate Student
• Nazar Delegan
  Argonne-Affiliated Postdoctoral Scholar
• Berk Diler Kovos
  Graduate Student
• Jacob Feder
  Graduate Student
• Masaya Fukami
  Graduate Student
• Elena Glen
  Graduate Student
• F. Joseph Heremans
  Staff scientist, Argonne National Laboratory; UChicago CASE scientist
• Paul Jerger
  Graduate Student

• Jonathan Karsch
  Graduate Student
• Marquis McMillan
  Graduate Student
• Peter Mintun
  Graduate Student
• Mouktik Raha
  Postdoctoral Scholar
• Grant Smith
  Graduate Student
• Benjamin Soloway
  Graduate Student
• Sean Sullivan
  Argonne-Affiliated Postdoctoral Scholar
• Yeghishe Tsaturyan
  Postdoctoral Scholar
• Erzsebet Vincent
  Graduate Student
• Maya Watts
  GEM Fellow
• Leah Weiss
  Postdoctoral Scholar
• Cyrus Zeledon
  Graduate Student
• Yizhi Zhu
  Graduate Student

• Benjamín Alemán
  Postdoctoral Alumni; Department of Physics, University of Oregon
• Chris Anderson
  Postdoctoral and Graduate Student Alumnus; Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University
• Paolo Andrich
  Graduate Student Alumni; HAL24K
• Lee Bassett
  Postdoctoral Alumni; Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering, University of Pennsylvania
• Jeremy Baumberg
  Postdoctoral Alumni; Hitachi Cambridge Research Center
• Sam Bayliss
  Postdoctoral alumnus; Electronics and Nanoscale Division of the James Watt School of Engineering, University of Glasgow
• Jesse Berezovsky
  Graduate Student Alumni; Department of Physics, Case Western Reserve University
• Bernd Beschoten
  Postdoctoral Alumni; RWTH Aachen, Germany
• Joerg Bochmann
  Postdoctoral Alumni; TRUMPF Lasertechnik
• Hope Bretscher
  Undergraduate Student Alumni; Department of Physics, University of Cambridge
• Bob Buckley
  Graduate Student Alumni Freedom Photonics, Santa Barbara, California
• Greg Calusine
  Graduate Student Alumni MIT Lincoln Laboratory
• Darius Choksy
  Undergraduate Student Alumni; Department of Physics, UC San Diego
• David Christle
  Graduate Student Alumni LinkedIn Corporation, Mountain View, California
• Agnetta Cleland
  Undergraduate Student Alumni; Department of Applied Physics, Stanford University
• Scott Crooker
  Graduate Student Alumni; Los Alamos National Laboratory / NHMFL
• Paul Crowell
  Postdoctoral Alumni; Department of Physics, University of Minnesota
• Charles de las Casas
  Graduate Student Alumni Integra Credit
• Ryan Epstein
  Graduate Student Alumni; Northrop Grumman Corporation
• Abram Falk
  Postdoctoral Alumni; IBM Watson Research Center
• Mark Field
  Postdoctoral Alumni; Symyx Corporation
• Mark R. Freeman
  Postdoctoral Alumni; Department of Physics, University of Alberta
• Dan Fuchs
  Postdoctoral Alumni; Lucent Laboratories
• Greg Fuchs
  Postdoctoral Alumni; Department of Applied and Engineering Physics, Cornell University
• Sai Ghosh
  Postdoctoral Alumni; Department of Physics, UC Merced
• Savas Gider
  Graduate Student Alumni; Apple Inc.
• Jay Gupta
  Graduate Student Alumni; Department of Physics, The Ohio State University
• Oliver Gywat
  Postdoctoral Alumni; Credit Suisse, Zurich
• Michael Haas
  Undergraduate Student Alumni; Department of Applied Physics, Harvard University
• Ronald Hanson
  Postdoctoral Alumni; Department of Physics, Delft University of Technology
• Jack Harris
  Graduate Student Alumni; Department of Physics, Yale University
• Alex Holleitner
  Postdoctoral Alumni; Walter Schottky Institute, TMU
• Viva Horowitz
  Graduate Student Alumni; Department of Physics, Hamilton College
• Ezekiel Johnston-Halperin
  Graduate Student Alumni; Department of Physics, The Ohio State University
• Yuichiro Kato
  Graduate Student Alumni; Department of Applied Physics, University of Tokyo
• Roland Kawakami
  Postdoctoral Alumni; Department of Physics, The Ohio State University
• Jay Kikkawa
  Graduate Student Alumni; Postdoctoral Alumni; Department of Physics, University of Pennsylvania
• Paul Klimov
  Graduate Student Alumni Google Inc., Santa Barbara, California
• Rob Knobel
  Postdoctoral Alumni; Department of Physics, Queen's University
• Hadrian Knotz
  Graduate Student Alumni; Senior Systems Architect, Solver, Inc.
• William Koehl
  Graduate Student Alumni; Quantum Computing Research, Northrop Grumman Corporation
• Wayne Lau
  Postdoctoral Alumni; EPIR Technologies Inc.

• Hope Lee
  Undergraduate Student Alumni; Department of Applied Physics, Stanford University
• Seung Hwan Lee
  Undergraduate Student Alumni; Department of Physics, Harvard University
• Jeremy Levy
  Postdoctoral Alumni; Department of Physics, University of Pittsburgh
• Yongqing Li
  Postdoctoral Alumni; Max Planck Institute, Stuttgart
• Shawn Mack
  Graduate Student Alumni; Naval Research Laboratory
• Brian Maertz
  Graduate Student Alumni; Freedom Photonics, Santa Barbara, California
• Irina Malajovich
  Graduate Student Alumni; Dupont Research, DE
• Florian Meier
  Postdoctoral Alumni; Patent law
• Ines Meinel
  Postdoctoral Alumni; Dupont Displays
• Felix Mendoza
  Graduate Student Alumni; TILL I.D. GmbH, Munich, Germany
• Kevin Miao
  Graduate Student Alumni; Google, Santa Barbara, CA
• Maiken Mikkelsen
  Graduate Student Alumni; Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Duke University
• Roberto Myers
  Graduate Student Alumni; Postdoctoral Alumni; Department of Materials Science and Engineering, The Ohio State University
• Vladimir Nikitin
  Graduate Student Alumni; Samsung Semiconductor Inc.
• Mark Nowakowski
  Graduate Student Alumni; Boeing Research and Technology, California
• Kenichi Ohno
  Graduate Student Alumni; Applied Materials, Santa Clara, California
• Min Ouyang
  Postdoctoral Alumni; Department of Physics, University of Maryland
• Ananya Pillutla
  Undergraduate Student Alumni; Marshall, Gerstein & Borun, Chicago, Illinois
• Martino Poggio
  Graduate Student Alumni; Department of Physics, University of Basel
• Alberto Politi
  Postdoctoral Alumni; Department of Physics, University of Southampton
• Mark B. Ritter
  Postdoctoral Alumni; IBM Watson Research Center
• Gian Salis
  Postdoctoral Alumni; IBM Zurich Research Laboratory
• Jing Shi
  Postdoctoral Alumni; Department of Physics, UC Riverside
• Vanessa Sih
  Graduate Student Alumni; Department of Physics, University of Michigan
• Joseph Smyth
  Postdoctoral Alumni; IBM Almaden Research Center
• Geoff Steeves
  Postdoctoral Alumni; Department of Physics, University of Victoria
• Jason Stephens
  Graduate Student Alumni; Postdoctoral Alumni; Thinsilicon Corporation
• Nate Stern
  Graduate Student Alumni Department of Physics and Astronomy, Northwestern University
• David Steuerman
  Postdoctoral Alumni; CNA Corporation
• Ashish Thapliyal
  Graduate Student Alumni; Department of Computer Science, UC Berkeley
• David Toyli
  Graduate Student Alumni IBM Watson Research Center
• David Tulchinsky
  Graduate Student Alumni; Naval Research Laboratory
• Joost van Bree
  Postdoctoral Alumni; Advanced Semiconductor Materials International (ASML)
• James Warnock
  Postdoctoral Alumni; IBM Watson Research Center
• Marie Wesson
  Undergraduate Student Alumni; Department of Applied Physics, Harvard University
• Samuel Whiteley
  Graduate Student Alumni; HRL Laboratories, LLC
• Gary Wolfowicz
  Postdoctoral and Assistant Staff Scientist Alumnus; Photonic Inc
• Xu Xiao
  Undergraduate Student Alumni; Department of Physics, Yale University
• Christopher Yale
  Graduate Student Alumni Sandia National Laboratory
• Andrew Yeats
  Graduate Student Alumni Naval Research Laboratory
• Darron Young
  Graduate Student Alumni; Intel Corporation
• Brian Zhou
  Postdoctoral Alumni; Department of Physics, Boston College