prof
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Aephraim M. Steinberg

Quantum physicist

Experimental quantum measurement, ultracold atoms,
quantum optics, and quantum information


Office: MP 1103 [generally vacant under Covid]
Telephone: (currently inactive)
Fax: (416) 978-2537 [verified rarely]
Labs: MP 054/056
Telephone: (416) 946-3162
e-mail: steinberg at physics.utoronto.ca

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Brief CV:
B.S., Yale University (1988); Research Assistant, LKB (then LSH), Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris (1989); Ph.D., U.C. Berkeley (1994); Chateaubriand Fellow, LKB, Université de Paris VI (1994); NRC Fellow, National Institute of Standards and Technology (1995-96); Asst. Prof., University of Toronto (1996-2001); APS Doctoral Thesis Prize for AMO Physics, 1996; Polanyi Prize, 1997; PREA award, 1999; Assoc. Prof., U of T (2001-2005); Gastprofessor, Univ. of Vienna (Fall 2003); Chercheur invité, Institut d'Optique, Orsay (Spring 2004); Senior Fellow, CIFAR (2004-); Full Prof., University of Toronto (2005-); CAP Herzberg Medal, 2006; RSC Rutherford Medal, 2006; McLean Fellow, 2007; Steacie Fellow, 2007; Fellow of the Optical Society of America, the American Physical Society, and the Institute of Physics (UK); Visiting Scholar, Univ. of Queensland (Nov 2008 - Feb 2009); JSPS Fellow and Visiting Professor (Hokkaido University), March - June 2011; Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (2016); Visiting professor, Laboratoire Kastler-Brossel, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Collège de France, Institut d'Optique, March - June 2018; Co-Director, CIFAR programme in Quantum Information Science (2017-); Visiting professor, Sapienza Università di Roma (Sep 2019 - Dec 2019); University Professor, University of Toronto (2021-).
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This link for use by university administrators only.



Links to a little light reading (eine kleine Lichtphysik)

When atoms cross a region they should never be able to enter, how long do they spend inside it?
When a photon doesn't get absorbed by an atom, how much time does it cause the atom to spend in its excited state?
How a Bird in the Quantum Hand Can be Worth 1000* in the Bush
There's More To Light Than Meets The I
My (paean to)/(rant about) LIGO:

I keep pondering how to explain to people why so many of us remain so excited about this LIGO announcement, excited to...

Posted by Aephraim Steinberg on Friday, February 12, 2016


May 2016: a new MOT is born, on the Rydberg-EIT-LMI apparatus!
(Cf. the original 1997 MOT from the predecessor apparatus)

April 2016: Our first observation of Rydberg-atom EIT -- in layman's terms, Rubidium atoms blown up thousands of times their usual size.
Realism Is For People Who Can't Take Their Nonlocality


What happens when you cross the beams: light-light interactions at the single-photon level
(Or watch the video abstract by Research Square.)

A Canary in a Quantum Coal Mine

Putting the squeeze on Schrödinger's cat

This One Goes To Eleven.
(The story of our latest paper on quantum metrology.)

The Search for the "Bloch Boson"
(The story of our recent paper on Bose-Einstein condensates.)

The BBC's description of our measurement of photon 'trajectories';
Chad Orzel's more scientifically accurate yet readable description of the same work;
Mitch Benn's musical(!) rendition of the same work;
and the full paper.
(See also this earlier paper with Howard Wiseman.)

Justin Mullins's New Scientist article on our work on closed timelike curves;
and
the original article

When you see without looking, can you trust what you see?;
a very funny take on this in the Toronto Star;
and the "physics and philosophy" section(!) in the Economist; oh, and, the technical article if you're up for that.

"Mapping a new world for light";
and the actual article.

Some miscellaneous recent news (see also full list of publications!) :

also Sep 2021: Congrats to David on his PRL about the red-light effect!

also Sep 2021: Congrats to David and our collaborators Léonce Dupays and Adolfo del Campo on this new PRR about matter-wave lensing.

Sep 2021: Congrats to Hugo and Aaron on their new paper with Luis Sánchez-Soto on multiparameter quantum metrology!

June 2021: Aephraim was named a University Professor!

February 2021: Hearty congratulations to alum Ramón Ramos, who has just won a Marie Curie postdoctoral fellowship!

February 2021: Congrats to Josiah Sinclair, who has won an NSERC postdoctoral fellowship to work with Vladan Vuletic at MIT!

November 2020: Arthur's Experimental Comparison of Bohm-like Theories with Different Primary Ontologies is out in Quantum 4, 365 (2020).

October 2020: Aaron's paper on "Transcoherent states" (more coherent than Glauber?) appeared in PRX Quantum.

September 2020: Just a plug for this new work by former group member David Schmid, co-worker John Selby, and U of T alum Rob Spekkens, on "unscrambling the omelette" of causation. Also available in video form.

August 2020: "Multiphase estimation without a reference mode", Aaron Goldberg's and my collaboration with the Sciarrino and Barbieri groups, appeared in Phys. Rev. A

July 2020: Our paper measuring how much time an atom spends in a region it's not allowed to be in in the first place has been published in Nature. Congratulations to Ramón, David, & Isabelle, and all the past members of the group who've put so much into this project over the years!

March 2020: Edwin successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis!
February 2020: Jbb-ubb! Edwin, Stacey, et al. have published their work on quantum fully homomorphic encryption in Phys Rev X! Pbatenghyngvbaf!

December 2019: Josiah et al.'s paper on huge optical nonlinearities using Rydberg atoms has been published in Physical Review Research! Congrats, every one!

November 2019: Edwin et al.'s demonstration of quantum fully homomorphic encryption has been accepted in PRX!

September 2019: Kent, Edwin, and Hugo's theory paper on practical sub-Rayleigh imaging using phase-sensitive measurements has been published in the New Journal of Physics!

September 2019: Ramón is off to Leticia Tarruell's group at ICFO (Barcelona) -- best wishes on the next chapter on your career!

Fall 2019: Join us in welcoming Jack Hong and Batuhan Yilmaz as new M.Sc. students in the group!

14 August 2019: Congratulations to Ramón on successfully defending his PhD!

July 2019: Our article on "Interpreting weak value amplification with a toy realist model" was published at Phys. Lett. A (doi.org/10.1016/j.physleta.2019.06.010).

10 August 2018: Our article on measuring sub-nanoKelvin temperatures (and observing tunneling in the process) is out! Congrats to Ramon, David, and Shreyas!

1 December 2017: We published a new paper on macroscopic quantum tunneling escape of Bose-Einstein condensates with Lincoln Carr's group.

27 November 2017: We published a paper presenting our view of the specific conditions under which weak-value amplification may be of practical use for precision measurements.

25 April 2017: We are featured in the new episode of Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman, annoyingly entitled "Is The Force With Us?" It talks about everything from LIGO to entanglement to loop quantum gravity.
It was fun (if exhausting) to see how the sausages get made, and though I could have done without all the misleading Star Wars references, and am always a bit skittish about how to describe our "surreal trajectories" work without giving people the wrong idea, at least they didn't make me work with the clown (seriously, there's a clown). Check it out.

27 February 2017: Matin's experiment using postselection to amplify the nonlinear-optical effect of single photons has appeared in Nature Physics (although I strongly recommend the arXiv version instead) -- congratulations to all the co-authors!

15 February 2017: Our experiment showing how to use phase information to evade Rayleigh's curse has appeared in PRL -- congratulations, Edwin and Hugo!

11 February 2017: Our paper on interaction-assisted tunneling of a Bose-Einstein condensate has appeared in PRL! Congratulations to Shreyas and the whole gang!

9 January 2017: We welcome Kent Bonsma-Fisher, the newest member of the group!

20 December 2016: My Physics Today column about Ryo Okamoto's beautiful quantum-shutter experiment has come out.

15 December 2016: Our paper on Quantum Thermometry has appeared in Scientific Reports!

21 June 2016: Alum Dylan Mahler has been appointed Lecturer of Quantum Engineering at the University of Bristol! Congratulations, and best of luck in your new position!

2 May 2016: Congrats to Josiah, Shaun, and Alex on observing cold Rubidium atoms in their new chamber for the first time!!! Now we're ready to do some science! (See above for photo; and compare the previous iteration of this apparatus, back in 1997!)

28 April 2016: Our paper on how well EIT-based nonlinearities work even for pulses shorter than the EIT response time appeared today in PRL! Congrats to Greg, Amir, Matin, and all the rest of the group!

24 April 2016: Scott Aaronson and I were interviewed on the CBC about quantum computing, and given substantially more time than in this Macleans's attempt to revisit the Justin Trudeau"Quantumgate".

20 April 2016: Josiah has succeeded in observing a Rydberg-EIT signal in our new setup! (See above for photos, and Clint Eastwood's explication of the effect.)

19 February 2016: Nice work, Dylan and Lee -- and Kent, Lydia, Kevin, and Howard! Our paper on reconstructing "surreal" Bohmian trajectories has appeared in Science Advances

21 January 2016: Congrats to Amir and Greg on the publication of their work showing that narrow EIT windows can offer an enhancement in nonlinearity even for broadband pulses!

15 January 2016: Congratulations to Shreyas Potnis on a successful PhD defense, and also the first in the new tradition of public PhD defenses at U of T Physics!

18 November 2015: Congratulations to Greg Dmochowski on successfully defending his Ph.D. thesis!

10 November 2015: Congratulations to alum Krister Shalm on submitting not one, but two, papers (A and B) on loophole-free tests of local realism (I guess even if you don't leave any loopholes, you still can't be too careful)! This may not earn him the Nobel Prize I keep predicting one of my students will earn (see family tree), but I think he's got a good shot at a pretty nice share of a Breakthrough Prize! Congratulations on taking part (and a leading role) in a truly historic set of experiments, Krister!

28 October 2015: Congratulations to Matin on successfully defending his Ph.D.!

24 August 2015: Amir, Matin, and Greg's work on observing nonlinear optics at the single-photon level has appeared in Nature Physics, DOI: 10.1038/nphys3433 .
(See also the video abstract by Research Square.)

27 April 2015: Congratulations to Lee, Chao, Dylan, Alex, John, and Marco on our first paper in Optica, this work on stimulated-emission entanglement tomography!


Follow this link for older group news & links




Group members



(For some old group photos, scroll down to Reza's photos, and for a more recent one courtesy of Big Brother, click here!
The pictures of our Chinese missile test are available here.)
The trick of being a quantum information scientist is to control a system without seeing what you're doing (since any observation would disturb the system.)
We are always looking for bright students and postdocs who are excited about probing the fundamental issues in quantum mechanics as well as investigating the possibilities for new technologies based on novel quantum effects.
A list of our present and past group members can be found below, with some links.

Research


Our main interests are in fundamental quantum-mechanical phenomena,, and particularly quantum information processing and the control & characterization of the quantum states of systems ranging from laser-cooled atoms to individual photons. We are members of the Quantum Optics Group at U of T, and the Center for Quantum Information and Quantum Control (CQIQC). I am also a Senior Fellow and co-Director of the Quantum Information Science programme of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and an affiliate member of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.
Our projects are supported by NSERC, CIFAR, FQXi, and the Fetzer Franklin Foundation. We have also enjoyed support from DARPA, CFI, PREA, and ORDCF, QuantumWorks, by the Canadian Institute for Photonics Innovations, Photonics Research Ontario, and Grumman Aerospace at various times.

Our experimental program is two-pronged, using both nonclassical two-photon interference and laser-cooled atoms to study issues such as quantum information & computation, decoherence and the quantum-classical boundary, tunneling times, weak measurement & retrodiction in quantum mechanics, and the control and characterisation of novel quantum states. For more information, scroll down to a text description of our present research topics and partial reverse-chronological list of publications, or click on one of the following pictures to access more details about some of our research areas.

Some sorted links to selections of our papers & talks:

Some general overviews of our research, quantum info, and problems in quantum measurement



Optical lattices (& quantum chaos, quantum control,...)

Entangled photons (& quantum information)

Bose-Einstein condensation (& atom tunneling)

Quantum measurement


Research projects

Specific projects of interest at the present time include:
    Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) and atomic tunneling
      Bose-condensed atoms are as far below the familiar energy scales of chemistry and condensed-matter physics as the latter are below the highest energies studied at CERN. They are to atomic beams what lasers are to candles, and open up numerous avenues of exciting research.
    • We have developed techniques to cool our atoms down to < 1 nK, where they're "even wavier" than light, with wavelengths up to 4 microns.
    • We are studying quantum tunneling of the atoms through barriers of light, answering questions such as "how long does the atom spend in the forbidden region?"
    • We will soon study where in a barrier atoms spend their time, and how the mere act of looking for the atom can "collapse" it and completely change its behaviour.
    • We are also developing Fabry-Perot "laser cavities" for the atoms, and look forward to studying the roles of interactions and truly quantum (beyond-mean-field) effects.
    Quantum information and quantum foundations with entangled photons
      We have several systems for the generation of pairs of photons with strong quantum correlations, and work on the development of newer, more powerful sources as well. Such pairs have been the workhorse of most tests of quantum nonlocality, and at the heart of many proposals for quantum cryptography and computation.
    • How much does quantum mechanics allow one to conclude from measurements about past (unmeasured) events? Can one particle be in two places at the same time?
    • How can entangled states, or quantum-inspired measurements, improve the resolution of telescopes, and precision measurement in general?
    • Is it possible to measure the "wave function of the vacuum"?
    Light-matter interfaces at the quantum level
      We use ultracold Rubidium atoms as a medium to make photons interact with one another
    • Can Rydberg atoms enable such strong photon-photon interactions that powerful quantum simulations become possible in the near term?
    • How much time does a photon spend "in an atom" as it's being transmitted through a gas cloud?


For more information, feel free to download the
papers and/or talks listed below, or to contact us directly.


Publications


(For an older publication list, with several links, go here)


SOME (MORE OR LESS) RECENT PAPERS

Intrinsic Sensitivity Limits for Multiparameter Quantum Metrology, Aaron Goldberg, Luis Sánchez-Soto, and Hugo Ferretti, Phys. Rev. Lett. 127, 110501 (2021)

Exact Delta Kick Cooling, Time-Optimal Control of Scale-Invariant Dynamics, and Shortcuts to Adiabaticity Assisted by Kicks, Léonce Dupays, David C. Spierings, Aephraim M. Steinberg, and Adolfo del Campo, submitted to Phys. Rev. Research (2021).

Tunneling takes less time when it's less probable, David C. Spierings and Aephraim M. Steinberg, submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett. (2021)

Measuring the time atoms spend in the excited state due to a photon they don't absorb, Josiah Sinclair, Daniela Angulo, Kyle Thompson, Kent Bonsma-Fisher, Aharon Brodutch, and Aephraim Steinberg, so ahead of its time that we're still having trouble finding an editor who recognizes its ground-breaking significance (2020).

Do qubits dream of entangled sheep?, Aharon Brodutch, Noah Lupu-Gladstein, Hugo Ferretti, Weng-Kian Tham, Arthur Ou Teen Pang, Kent Bonsma-Fisher, and Aephraim M. Steinberg, submitted (2020).

Transcoherent states: Optical states for maximal generation of atomic coherence, Aaron Z. Goldberg and Aephraim M. Steinberg, PRX Quantum 1, 020306 (2020)

Multiphase estimation without a reference mode, Aaron Z. Goldberg, Ilaria Gianani, Marco Barbieri, Fabio Sciarrino, Aephraim M. Steinberg, and Nicolò Spagnolo, Phys. Rev. A 102, 022230 (2020)

Experimental Comparison of Bohm-like Theories with Different Primary Ontologies, Arthur O. T. Pang, Hugo Ferretti, Noah Lupu-Gladstein, Weng-Kian Tham, Aharon Brodutch, Kent Bonsma-Fisher, J. E. Sipe, and Aephraim M. Steinberg, Quantum 4, 365 (2020).

Measuring the time a tunnelling atom spends in the barrier, Ramón Ramos, David Spierings, Isabelle Racicot, Aephraim M. Steinberg, Nature DOI 10.1038/s41586-020-2490-7 (2020).

Observation of a large, resonant, cross-Kerr nonlinearity in a free-space Rydberg medium, Josiah Sinclair, Daniela Angulo, Noah Lupu-Gladstein, Kent Bonsma-Fisher, Aephraim M. Steinberg, Physical Review Research 1, 033193 (2019)

Realistic sub-Rayleigh imaging with phase-sensitive measurements, Kent Bonsma-Fisher, Weng-Kian Tham, Hugo Ferretti, Aephraim Steinberg, New. J. Phys. 21, 093010 (2019).

Experimental Demonstration of Quantum Fully Homomorphic Encryption with Application in a Two-Party Secure Protocol, W. K. Tham, Hugo Ferretti, Kent Bonsma-Fisher, Aharon Brodutch, Barry C. Sanders, Aephraim M. Steinberg, Stacey Jeffery, Phys. Rev. X 10, 011038 (2020).

Interpreting weak value amplification with a toy realist model, Josiah Sinclair, David Spierings, Aharon Brodutch, and Aephraim M. Steinberg, Phys. Lett. A 24, 2839 (2019).

Atom-optics knife-edge: Measuring narrow momentum distributions, Ramon Ramos, David Spierings, Shreyas Potnis, Aephraim M. Steinberg, Phys. Rev. A 98, 023611 (2018).

Macroscopic Quantum Tunneling Escape of Bose-Einstein Condensates, Xinxin Zhao, Diego Alcala, Marie McLain, Kenji Maeda, Shreyas Potnis, Ramon Ramos, Aephraim Steinberg, and Lincoln Carr, Phys. Rev. A 96, 063601 (2017).

Weak-value amplification and optimal parameter estimation in the presence of correlated noise, Josiah Sinclair, Matin Hallaji, Aephraim M. Steinberg, Jeff Tollaksen, and Andrew Jordan, Phys. Rev. A 96, 052128 (2017).

How the Result of Counting One Photon Can Turn Out to Be a Value of 8, Matin Hallaji, Amir Feizpour, Greg Dmochowski, Josiah Sinclair, and Aephraim Steinberg, published as "Weak-value amplification of the nonlinear effect of a single photon," Nature Physics 10.1038/nphys4040 (2017) [but note that because of some last-minute editing issues, I strongly recommend reading the arXiv version rather than the published article].

Beating Rayleigh's Curse by Imaging Using Phase Information, Weng-Kian Tham, Hugo Ferretti, and Aephraim Steinberg, Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 070801 (2017)

Quantum Measurements: a modern view for quantum optics experimentalists, Aephraim M. Steinberg, Les Houches lectures published in Quantum Optics and Nanophotonics, eds. Fabre, Sandoghdar, Treps, and Cugliandolo, Oxford University Press (2017).

Interaction-assisted quantum tunneling of a Bose-Einstein condensate out of a single trapping well, Shreyas Potnis, Ramon Ramos, Kenji Maeda, Lincoln D. Carr, and Aephraim M. Steinberg, Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 060402 (2017).

Shutting a new door on locality, A.M. Steinberg, Physics Today DOI:10.1063/PT.5.9076 (2016)

Simulating and Optimising Quantum Thermometry Using Single Photons , W.K. Tham, H. Ferretti, A.V. Sadashivan, and A.M. Steinberg, Sci. Rep. 6, 38822 (2016).

Experimental Demonstration of the Effectiveness of Electromagnetically Induced Transparency for Enhancing Cross-Phase Modulation in the Short-Pulse Regime, Greg Dmochowski, Amir Feizpour, Matin Hallaji, Chao Zhuang, Alex Hayat, and Aephraim M. Steinberg, Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 173002 (2016).

Experimental nonlocal and surreal Bohmian trajectories, Dylan Mahler, Lee Rozema, Kent Fisher, Lydia Vermeyden, Kevin Resch, Howard Wiseman, and Aephraim Steinberg, Science Advances 2, e1501466 (2016).

Short-pulse cross-phase modulation in an electromagnetically-induced-transparency medium, Amir Feizpour, Greg Dmochowski, and Aephraim Steinberg, Phys. Rev. A 93, 013843 (2016).

Observation of the nonlinear phase shift due to single post-selected photons, Amir Feizpour, Matin Hallaji, Greg Dmochowski, and Aephraim Steinberg, Nature Physics, DOI: 10.1038/nphys3433 (2015)

Characterizing an entangled-photon source with classical detectors and measurements, Lee Rozema, Chao Wang, Dylan Mahler, Alex Hayat, Aephraim Steinberg, John Sipe, and Marco Liscidini, Optica 2, 430 (2015).

A Note on Different Definitions of Momentum Disturbance, Lee Rozema, Dylan Mahler, Alex Hayat, and Aephraim Steinberg, posted 2013; actual publication in Phys Rev abandoned since despite positive reports from the referees, the paper was rejected on the grounds that the authors whose definitions of disturbance we were trying to clarify and contrast with those used in the paper of ours they criticized turned out (surprise surprise) not to like our definitions of disturbance... finally appeared in Quantum Studies: Mathematics and Foundations, 2015, 10.1007/s40509-014-0027-1

Enhanced coherence between condensates formed resonantly at different times, Alex Hayat, Christoph Lange, Lee Rozema, Rockson Chang, Shreyas Potnis, Henry van Driel, Aephraim Steinberg, Mark Steger, David Snoke, Loren Pfeiffer, and Kenneth West, Opt. Exp. 22, 30559 (2014)

Quantum Data Compression of a Qubit Ensemble, Lee Rozema, Dylan Mahler, Alex Hayat, Peter Turner, and Aephraim Steinberg, Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 160504 (2014); chosen as an Editors' Suggestion and featured as a Focus in Physics 7, 106 (2014)

Experimental demonstration of a flexible time-domain quantum channel, Xingxing Xing, Amir Feizpour, Alex Hayat, and Aephraim Steinberg, Optics Express 22, 25128 (2014)

Scalable spatial superresolution using entangled photons, Lee Rozema(*), James Bateman(*), Dylan Mahler, Ryo Okamoto, Amir Feizpour, Alex Hayat, and Aephraim Steinberg, Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 223602 (2014). [Selected as an Editors' Suggestion and for a Viewpoint in Physics.]
(*) These authors contributed equally to this work

On the Optimal Choice of Spin-Squeezed States for Detecting and Characterizing a Quantum Process, Lee Rozema, Dylan Mahler, Robin Blume-Kohout, and Aephraim Steinberg, Phys. Rev. X.4, 041025 (2014)

Observing the Onset of Effective Mass, Rockson Chang, Shreyas Potnis, Ramon Ramos, Chao Zhuang, Matin Hallaji, Alex Hayat, Federico Duque-Gomez, John Sipe, and Aephraim Steinberg, Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 170404 (2014).

Ultra-Fast Stark-Induced Control of Polaritonic States, E. Cancellieri, A. Hayat, A.M. Steinberg, E. Giacobino, and A. Bramati, Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 053601 (2014).

Sub-Rabi-cycle modulation of light-matter coupling, and onset of strong coupling, Christoph Lange, Alex Hayat, Lee A. Rozema, Rockson Chang, Shreyas Potnis, Henry M. van Driel, Aephraim M. Steinberg, Mark Steger, David W. Snoke, Loren N. Pfeiffer and Kenneth W. West, submitted 2013.

Cooper-pair based photon entanglement without isolated emitters, Alex Hayat, Hae-Young Kee, Kenneth S. Burch, and Aephraim M. Steinberg, submitted April 2013, accepted June 2013, sent back to referees based on unsolicited remarks sent to PRB editors by anonymous cranky individuals, and as of late October still in limbo thanks to this disgusting behaviour of the PRB editors (who even went so far as to retroactively doctor the automated "status inquiry" system to hide the fact that they sent us an acceptance letter on June 28th, not merely "miscellaneous communication"!) finally appeared in March 2014 as Phys. Rev. B {\bf 89}, 094508 (2014).

Enhanced Probing of Fermion Interaction Using Weak Value Amplification, Alex Hayat, Amir Feizpour, and Aephraim M. Steinberg, Phys. Rev. A 88, 062301 (2013).

In Praise of Weakness, Aephraim Steinberg, Amir Feizpour, Lee Rozema, Dylan Mahler, and Alex Hayat, Physics World March 2013, pp 35-40.

Adaptive quantum state tomography improves accuracy quadratically, Dylan Mahler, Lee Rozema, Ardavan Darabi, Chris Ferrie, Robin Blume-Kohout, and Aephraim Steinberg, Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 183601 (2013).

Observation of Transient Momentum-Space Interference During Scattering of a Condensate from an Optical Barrier, Rockson Chang, Shreyas Potnis, Chris Ellenor, Mirco Siercke, Alex Hayat, and Aephraim Steinberg, Phys. Rev. A 88, 053634 (2013).

Coherent control of population transfer between vibrational states in an optical lattice via two-path quantum interference, Chao Zhuang, Christopher Paul, Xiaoxian Liu, Samansa Maneshi, Luciano Cruz, and Aephraim Steinberg, Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 233002 (2013).

Multidimensional quantum information based on single-photon temporal wavepackets, Alex Hayat, Xingxing Xing, Amir Feizpour, and Aephraim M. Steinberg, Opt. Exp. 20, 29174 (2012).

Hybrid high-temperature superconductor-semiconductor tunnel diode, A. Hayat, P. Zareapour, S.Y.F. Zhao, A.Jain, I.G. Savelyev, M. Blumin, Z. Xu, A.Yang, G. D. Gu, H. E. Ruda, S. Jia, R. J. Cava, A. M. Steinberg, and K. S. Burch, Phys. Rev. X 2, 041019 (2012).

Identification of Decoherence-Free Subspaces Without Quantum Process Tomography, D.H. Mahler, L. Rozema, A. Darabi, and A.M. Steinberg, Phys. Rev. A 86. 052101 (2012)

Violation of Heisenberg's Measurement-Disturbance Relationship by Weak Measurements, Lee Rozema, Ardavan Darabi, Dylan Mahler, Alex Hayat, Yasaman Soudagar, and Aephraim Steinberg, Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 100404 (2012); selected as an Editors' Suggestion and featured as a Synopsis in Physics.

Dynamic Stark Effect in Strongly Coupled Microcavity Exciton-Polaritons, Alex Hayat, Christoph Lange, Lee Rozema, Ardavan Darabi, Henry van Driel, Aephraim Steinberg, Bryan Nelsen, David Snoke, Loren Pfeiffer, and Kenneth West, Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 033605 (2012).

Self-calibrating Quantum State Tomography, Agata M. Branczyk, Dylan H. Mahler, Lee A. Rozema, Ardavan Darabi, Aephraim M. Steinberg, and Daniel F. V. James, New J. Phys. 14, 085003 (2012).

Enhancing metrology sensitivity by weak measurements, Alex Hayat, Amir Feizpour, and Aephraim Steinberg, SPIE Newsroom 10.1117/2.1201112.004014 (2011).

Weak Measurement Amplification of Single-Photon Nonlinearity, Amir Feizpour, Xingxing Xing, and Aephraim M. Steinberg, Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 133603 (2011).

Observing the Average Trajectories of Single Photons in a Two-Slit Interferometer, S. Kocsis, B. Braverman, S. Ravets, M.J. Stevens, R.P. Mirin, L.K. Shalm, and A.M. Steinberg, Science 332, 1170 (2011)

Experimental characterization of qutrits using SIC-POVMs, Z.E.D Medendorp, F.A. Torres-Ruiz, L.K. Shalm, G.N.M. Tabia, C.A. Fuchs, and A.M. Steinberg, Phys. Rev. A 83, 051801(R) (2011).

Coherence freeze in an optical lattice investigated via pump-probe spectroscopy, Samansa Maneshi, Chao Zhuang, Christopher R. Paul, Luciano S. Cruz, and Aephraim M. Steinberg, Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 193001 (2010).

A reply to "Problems with modelling closed timelike curves as post-selected teleportation", Seth Lloyd, Lorenzo Maccone, Raul Garcia-Patron, Vittoria Giovanetti, Yutaka Shikano, Stefano Pirandola, Lee Rozema, Ardavan Darabi, Yasaman Soudagar, Lynden (Krister) Shalm, and Aephraim Steinberg (2011).

Closed timelike curves via post-selection: theory and experiment, Seth Lloyd, Lorenzo Maccone, Raul Garcia-Patron, Vittoria Giovannetti, Yutaka Shikano, Stefano Pirandola, Lee A. Rozema, Ardavan Darabi, Yasaman Soudagar, Lynden K. Shalm, and Aephraim M. Steinberg, Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 040403 (2011).

Quantum measurement: A light touch, A.M. Steinberg, Nature 463, 890 (2010).

Improving Quantum State Estimation with Mutually Unbiased Bases, R.B.A. Adamson and A.M. Steinberg, Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 030406 (2010).

Matchgate quantum computing and non-local process analysis, S. Ramelow, A. Fedrizzi, A.M. Steinberg, and A.G. White, New. J. Phys. 12, 083027 (2010).

Experimental joint weak measurement on a photon pair as a probe of Hardy's Paradox, J.S. Lundeen and A.M. Steinberg, Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 020404 (2009).

Squeezing and over-squeezing of triphotons, L.K. Shalm, R.B.A. Adamson, and A.M. Steinberg, Nature 457, 67 (2009).

Bright filter-free source of indistinguishable photon pairs, F. Wolfgramm, X. Xing, A Cere, A. Predojevic, A.M. Steinberg, and M.W. Mitchell, Optics Express 16, 18145 (2008).

Detecting hidden differences via permutation symmetries, R.B.A. Adamson, P.S. Turner, M.W. Mitchell, and A.M. Steinberg, Phys. Rev. A 78, 033832 (2008).

Efficient vibrational-state coupling in an optical tilted-washboard potential via multiple spatial translations, Samansa Maneshi, Jalani F. Kanem, Chao Zhuang, Matt Partlow, and Aephraim M. Steinberg, Phys. Rev. A 77, 022303 (2008).

A double-slit 'which-way' experiment addressing the complementarity-uncertainty debate, R. Mir, J.S. Lundeen, M.W. Mitchell, A.M. Steinberg, H.M. Wiseman, and J.L. Garretson, New J. Phys. 9 (2007) 287

Preparation of pure and mixed polarization qubits and the direct measurement of figures of merit, R.B.A. Adamson, L.K. Shalm, and A.M. Steinberg, Phys. Rev. A 75, 012104 (2007).

Observation of high-order quantum resonances in the kicked rotor, J.F. Kanem, S. Maneshi, M. Partlow, M. Spanner, and A.M. Steinberg, Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 083004 (2007).

Multiparticle State Tomography: Hidden Differences, R.B.A. Adamson, L.K. Shalm, M.W. Mitchell, and A.M. Steinberg, Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 043601 (2007).

Optimal bounded-error strategies for projective measurements in non-orthogonal state discrimination, M.A.P. Touzel, R.B.A. Adamson, and A.M. Steinberg, Phys. Rev. A 76, 062314 (2007).

Phase Space Tomography of Classical and Nonclassical Vibrational States of Atoms in an Optical Lattice, J.F. Kanem, S. Maneshi, S.H. Myrskog, and A.M. Steinberg, J. Opt. B. 7, S705(2005).

Quantum Process Tomography on vibrational states of atoms in an optical lattice, S.H. Myrskog, J.K. Fox, M.W. Mitchell, and A.M. Steinberg, Phys. Rev. A 72, 013615 (2005)

Classical and Quantum Analysis of One-Dimensional Velocity Selection for Ultracold Atoms, J.K. Fox, H.A. Kim, S.R. Mishra, S.H. Myrskog, A.M. Jofre, L.R. Segal, J.B. Kim, and A.M. Steinberg, J. Opt. B. 7, 240 (2005).

Quantum nonlocality obtained from local states by entanglement purification, P. Walther, K.J. Resch, C. Brukner, A.M. Steinberg, J.-W. Pan, and A. Zeilinger, Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 040504 (2005)

Optical realization of optimal unambiguous discrimination for pure and mixed quantum states, M. Mohseni, A.M. Steinberg, and J. Bergou, Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 200403 (2004)

Super-resolving phase measurements with a multi-photon entangled state, M.W. Mitchell, J.S. Lundeen, and A.M. Steinberg, Nature 429, 161 (2004).

Extracting joint weak values with local, single-particle measurements, K.J. Resch and A.M. Steinberg, Phys. Rev. Lett. 92,130402 (2004).

Experimental Realization of the Quantum Box Problem, K.J. Resch, J.S. Lundeen, A.M. Steinberg, Phys. Lett. A 324, 125 (2004).

Photon-exchange effects on photon-pair transmission, K.J. Resch, G.G. Lapaire, J.S. Lundeen, J.E. Sipe, A.M. Steinberg, Phys. Rev. A 69, 063814 (2004).

Clear message for causality, A.M. Steinberg, Physics World (Dec. 2003).

Experimental Characterization of 1-D Velocity Selection, S.H. Myrskog, J.K. Fox, L.R. Segal, A.M. Steinberg, A.M. Jofre, and S.R. Mishra, J. Kor. Phys. Soc 47, 6 (2005).

Diagnosis, prescription and prognosis of a Bell-state filter by quantum process tomography, M.W. Mitchell, C.W. Ellenor, S. Schneider, and A.M. Steinberg, Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 120402 (2003).

Experimental application of decoherence-free subspaces in a optical quantum computing algorithm, M. Mohseni, J.S. Lundeen, K.J. Resch, and A.M. Steinberg, Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 187903 (2003).

Speakable and Unspeakable, Past and Future, A.M. Steinberg, in SCIENCE AND ULTIMATE REALITY: Quantum Theory, Cosmology and Complexity, ed. John D. Barrow, Paul C.W. Davies, and Charles L. Harper, Jr., Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Practical creation and detection of polarization Bell states using parametric down-conversion, K.J. Resch, J.S. Lundeen, and A.M. Steinberg, in The Physics of Communication, Proceedings of the XXII Solvay Conference on Physics, Antoniou, Sadovnichy, and Walther eds., World Scientific (2003), pp 437-451.

A conditional-phase switch at the single-photon level, K.J. Resch, J.S. Lundeen, and A.M. Steinberg, Phys. Rev. Lett. 89, 037904 (2002).

Experimental issues in quantum-mechanical time measurement, A.M. Steinberg, in Time in Quantum Mechanics, edited by J.G. Muga et al. (Springer-Verlag, 2002), pp. 305-325

Quantum state preparation and conditional coherence, K.J. Resch, J.S. Lundeen, and A.M. Steinberg, Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 113601 (2002).

Electromagnetically induced opacity for photon pairs, K.J. Resch, J.S. Lundeen, and A.M. Steinberg, J. Mod. Opt. 49, 487 (2002).

Nonlinear optics with less than one photon, K.J. Resch, J.S. Lundeen, and A.M. Steinberg, Phys. Rev. Lett 87, 123603 (2001).

Comment on 'Manipulating the frequency entangled states by an acoustic-optical modulator,' K.J. Resch, S.H. Myrskog, J.S. Lundeen, and A.M. Steinberg, Phys. Rev. A 64, 056101 (2001).

Experimental observation of nonclassical effects on single-photon detection rates, K.J. Resch, J.S. Lundeen, and A.M. Steinberg, Phys. Rev. A 63, 020102 (2000).

Total reflection does not occur in negative time, K.J. Resch, J.S. Lundeen, and A.M. Steinberg, IEEE J. Quant. Electr. 37, 794 (2001).

No thing goes faster than light, A.M. Steinberg, Physics World 13, 21 (2000).

Modified "delta kick cooling" using magnetic field gradients, S.H. Myrskog, J.K. Fox, H.S. Moon, J.B. Kim, and A.M. Steinberg, Phys. Rev. A 61, 053412/1-6 (2000).

Nanokelvin of the North, S.H. Myrskog, J.K. Fox, and A.M. Steinberg, Physics in Canada 55, 149 (7-8/99).

On energy transfer by detection of a tunneling atom, A. M. Steinberg, Journal of the Korean Physical Society 35 (3), 122 (1999).

`` An atom optics experiment to investigate faster-than-light tunneling,'' A.M. Steinberg, S. Myrskog, Han Seb Moon, Hyun Ah Kim, Jalani Fox, and Jung Bog Kim, Ann. Phys. (Leipzig) 7, 593 (1998).

`` Can a falling tree make a noise in two forests at the same time?'', A. M. Steinberg, in Causality and Locality in Modern Physics, S. Jeffers, G. Hunter, and J.-P. Vigier, eds., Kluwer Academic Publishers (Dordrecht: 1997), p. 431.

`` Squeezing with cold atoms", A. Lambrecht, T. Coudreau, A.M. Steinberg, and E. Giacobino, Europhysics Letters, vol. 36, (no. 2): 93-98, 10 October 1996.

``Quantum non-locality in two-photon experiments at Berkeley", R.Y. Chiao, P.G. Kwiat, and A.M. Steinberg, Quantum and Semiclassical Optics, vol. 7, (no. 3): 259-78, June (1995).

``Conditional probabilities in quantum theory and the tunneling-time controversy", A.M. Steinberg, Physical Review A, vol. 52, (no. 1): 32-42, July (1995).

``How much time does a tunneling particle spend in the barrier region?", A.M. Steinberg, Physical Review Letters, vol. 74, (no. 13): 2405-9, March (1995).

``Measurement of the single-photon tunneling time", A.M. Steinberg, P.G. Kwiat, and R.Y. Chiao, Phys. Rev. Lett., vol. 71, (no. 5): 708-11, August (1993).

Tunneling Times and Superluminality, R. Y. Chiao and A. M. Steinberg, in Progress in Optics vol. XXXVII, Emil Wolf ed., Elsevier (Amsterdam: 1997), pp. 347-406.

Quantum Optical Tests of the Foundations of Physics, A.M. Steinberg, R.Y. Chiao, and P.G. Kwiat, in the American Insitute of Physics Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics Handbook, edited by G.W.F. Drake, AIP Press, 1996.

Optical tests of quantum mechanics, R.Y. Chiao, P.G. Kwiat, and A.M. Steinberg, in Advances in Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics, vol. 34, B. Bederson and H. Walther eds, Academic Press, 1994.

`` Faster Than Light?", R.Y. Chiao, P.G. Kwiat, and A.M. Steinberg, Scientific American, vol. 269, (no. 2): 52-60, August (1993).

What does 'Gedankenexperiment' mean?

Babar et les variables cachées

SOME RECENT(?) POSTERS AND PRESENTATIONS

Learning about a quantum system's past from present observations: from tunneling times to pigeonholes, my keynote address from Causality in the quantum world: harnessing quantum effects in causal inference problems(Capri, 2019).

Experimental studies of quantum reality, my keynote address from the 2017 conference on Emergent Quantum Mechanics.

Slides from my talk "From Tunneling Atoms to Thermalizing Photons to Peering at Binary Stars" at Quantum Optics VIII (Maresias, Brasil, October 2016), in which I present our work on sub-Rayleigh imaging, and some other recent projects.

How to Count One Photon and Get a Result of 8, invited lecture at the Technion, 2016

Weak measurement, uncertainty relationships, and tradeoffs in experimental quantum measurements, slides and video of a presentation given at the celebration of Yakir Aharonov's 80th birthday at Chapman university, August 2012.

God's Dice: From Einstein to the Internet is a talk I gave for the PASU and Engineering Science students on Nov 24, 2009, updated from an earlier talk at the Ontario Science Centre in celebration of the Einsteinjahr. It goes from wave-particle duality and the Bohr-Einstein debates through the EPR Paradox and Bell's Inequalities to a layman's introduction to quantum cryptography, computation, and teleportation.

Testing a new way of sharing files...

Thinking Inside the Box: Weakly Measuring Postselected Ensembles, The Clock and the Quantum, Sep 2008, at PI's site as Flash Presentation.

Tomography on the Sphere, Krister's talk at the QUEST workshop, August 2008 (multimedia format at PI's site)

Improving Quantum State Tomography with Mutually Unbiased Bases, Rob's talk at the QUEST workshop, August 2008 (multimedia format at PI's site)

Measuring Quantum States in the Presence of Fundamental Symmetries, invited talk at QCMC (Calgary, August 2008).

Quantum states of light and quantum interference, first of two talks at the Michigan Quantum Summer School (June 2008); or mp4 video.

Quantum measurement and quantum information with photons, second of two talks at the Michigan Quantum Summer School (June 2008); or mp4 video.

Decoherence and Control of Vibrational States of Atoms in an Optical Lattice

A recent overview of our work on controlling and measuring atoms and photons

A poster describing some of the major goals of our BEC experiment, as of February 2007

Chris's talk about our BEC experiment

Samansa's talk about control of optical lattices

Matt's talk about our observation of quantum resonances in an optical lattice

Manipulating and Measuring the Quantum State of Photons and Atoms, invited talk at QUEST workshop 2005.

Our latest progress towards BEC of 87Rb, and planned experiments

Le photon dans tous ses états, séminaire du Collège de France, mai 2004.

Small-scale quantum information processing with linear optics, presentation by Masoud Mohseni at Quantum Physics of Nature meeting, Vienna, May 2005.

Expériences de tomographie et d'échos dans des réseaux optiques, séminaire à l'Institut d'Optique à Orsay, mai 2004.

Annual report on our tailored quantum error correction project, May 2004.

Recent experiments on weak measurement and quantum state construction, Quantum Theory seminar, Tel-Aviv University, April 2004.

Series of lectures on Experimental Issues in Quantum Measurement, Vienna, Fall 2003.

Nonlinear optics at the quantum level and quantum information in optical systems.

Quantum Process Tomography in an Optical Lattice, Stefan's talk at DAMOP 2003.

Tunneling-Induced Coherence in Optical Lattices, Samansa's poster for the 2003 Cross-Border Workshop.

Optical implementation of the Quantum Box Problem, QELS 03 talk by K. Resch, J. Lundeen, and A. Steinberg.

An Experimental Implementation of Hardy's Paradox, QELS 03 talk by J.S. Lundeen, K.J. Resch, and A.M. Steinberg.

Quantum algorithms in the presence of decoherence: optical experiments, QELS 03 talk by M. Mohseni, J. Lundeen, K. Resch, and A. Steinberg.

Playing Games With the Information in Atoms and Photons, one version of a colloquium I've been giving in 2003 describing a number of our ongoing projects.

Quantum Information With Photons and Atoms, talk by A.M. Steinberg at the Physics of Quantum Electronics conference (2003).

Motional Quantum State Tomography on Atoms in an Optical Lattice, poster by S.H. Myrskog, J.K. Fox, and A.M. Steinberg (2002).

Optical Implementation of the Deutsch-Jozsa Algorithm in the Presence of Noise, poster by M. Mohsen, J.S. Lundeen, K.J. Resch, and A.M. Steinberg (2002) (also available in pdf format).

Amplification of Superluminality,presentation at ITP Mini-Workshop on Quantum Optics (2002) by A.M. Steinberg.

Efficient 1-D velocity selection in laser-cooled atom clouds, S.H. Myrskog, J.K. Fox, A.M. Jofre, L.R. Segal, S.R. Mishra, and A.M. Steinberg, at the 8th Rochester Conference on Coherence and Quantum Optics, June 2001.

Kevin's talk on ``Coherence conditioned on a single photon'' at the International Conference on Squeezed States and Uncertainty Relations, Boston, 2001.

Experiments with Entangled Photons, lecture by A.M. Steinberg at the May 2001 Fields Institute Summer School in Quantum Information Processing.

Transparencies for Jeff's talk on Nonlinear Optics With Less Than One Photon at the Snowbird Winter Conference on Quantum Electronics, January 2001.

We presented a poster at the Euroschool on Bose Condensation and Atom Optics in July, 2000 on our velocity-selection work and plans to observe atomic tunneling.

We presented a poster at DAMOP 2000 on an ongoing experiment to test 100% Reflection in Less Than No Time at All.

We presented a poster at the Gordon Conference on Dynamics of Simple Systems in the summer of 1999, discussing Velocity-Selection of Ultracold Atoms .

We presented two posters at the 16th International Conference on Atomic Physics in August, 1998. One was entitled Ultra-Cold atoms for investigations into atomic tunneling, and the other was Quantum Interference with Femtosecond Photon Pair Pulses.



Research Associates, Postdocs and Visitors

(
Postdoctoral opportunities available)


Graduate Students

Hugo Ferretti: Entangled photons and quantum metrology

David Spierings: Tunneling times and barrier interactions

Arthur Pang: entangled photons and Bohm trajectories

Noah Lupu-Gladstein: entangled photons and the pigeonhole principle

Daniela Angulo Murcillo: Quantum light-matter interfaces

Joseph McGowan: BEC

Kyle Thompson: Rydberg atoms and LMI

Batuhan Yilmaz: entangled photons

Nick Mantella: Bose-Einstein condensates

Vida-Michelle Nixon: quantum light-matter interactions

Harshil Neeraj: Bose-Einstein condensates

Undergraduate Students

Grace (Kehui) Li worked with us in the summer of 2020, and is continuing through academic 2020-1.
(For undergraduate research opportunities, see
announcement.)

Some of our collaborators (past, present, and future)

Howard Wiseman
Aaron Goldberg
Fabio Sciarrino
Marco Barbieri
Zlatko Minev
Klaus Mølmer
John Sipe
Paul Brumer
Joseph Thywissen
Morgan Mitchell
Nicolas Godbout
Allan Griffin
Paul Kwiat
Andrew White
Ray Chiao
Peter Turner
Sasha Sergienko
J. Gonzalo Muga
Janos Bergou
Mark Hillery
Daniel Lidar
Daniel James
Alain Aspect
Raymond Laflamme
Sergei Kulik
Maria Chekhova
Misha Ivanov
John Behr
Ivan Deutsch
Poul Jessen
Raymond Laflamme
Terry Rudolph
Rob Spekkens
Anton Zeilinger
Rich Mirin

Former group members

Former grad students and technologist:

Josiah Sinclair completed his Ph.D. on measuring the time photons cause atoms to spend in the excited state even if they are not absorbed, and in 2021 moved to MIT to do a postdoc with Vladan Vuletic.

Jack Hong carried out his M.Sc. on our BEC project.

Edwin (Weng-Kian) Tham completed his PhD in 2020 on Quantum Homomorphic Encryption, and moved to the world of quantum startups.

Ramón Ramos completed his PhD on atomic tunneling times in 2019, and has begun a postdoc with Leticia Tarruell's group at ICFO-Barcelona.

Isabelle Racicot worked on the BEC experiment through 2018, and is now moving to Marseille to work on brain imaging. Good luck, Isabelle!

Alan Stummer (Research Laboratory Technologist) was an invaluable member of our team for many years
Qizhong Liang moved on to the University of Colorado to complete his Ph.D. on ultrafast lasers

Alex Bruening did his M.Sc. on our light-matter interaction project.

Shaun Pepper did his M.Sc. on our light-matter interaction project.

Matin Hallaji has joined the hordes of physicists at ScotiaBank, after finishing his Ph.D. in 2016.

Greg Dmochowski completed his Ph.D. in 2015, spent some time with Virgis Barzda and Brian Wilson working on biophotonics, and is now an R&D scientist at Wyatt Technology.

Shreyas Potnis did a postdoc with Amar Vutha's group in Toronto, and is now an Optical Architect at North.

Amir Feizpour was a postdoc at Oxford, and is now doing machine learning and big data at Royal Bank and with his own startup company, Aggregate Intellect.

Ginelle Johnston completed her M.Sc. with us in 2014, and is now a managing engineer at Bombardier.

Dylan Mahler spent several years at Bristol before returning to Toronto to join the team at Xanadu.

Lee Rozema is a postdoc at Vienna.

Rockson Chang spent a postdoc at the Institut d'Optique, Palaiseau, moved thence to Insight Data Science, and is now lead data scientist at Meetup.

Xingxing Xing, after completing his PhD with us, started a quantum cryptography company with Christian Weedbrook.

Chao Zhuang moved into finance after completing his PhD with us.

Paul Godin did his M.Sc. with us in 2011-2012.

Yasaman Soudagar: after collaborating with us during her Ph.D. with Prof. Nicolas Godbout of the Ecole Polytechnique, Yasaman held an NSERC Industrial Postdoc, and went on to found the award-winning start-up Neurescence.

Chris Ellenor: Bose-Einstein condensation and interactions with dipole barrier
(Chris did a postdoc at Stanford working on the development of novel MRI systems, and then went on to do R&D consulting with Triple Ring Technologies.)
Mirco Siercke: dissertation copy-editing (Mirco was a postdoc with Rainer Dumke in Singapore, and then moved to the Molecular Quantum Gases group in Hannover)
Samansa Maneshi: Tomography and control in optical lattices (Samansa went on to a postdoc with Dwayne Miller in Hamburg)
Lynden (Krister) Shalm joined Saewoo Nam and Rich Mirin's group at NIST-Boulder (where he led one of the experiments which closed the loopholes in Bell-Inequality tests), after completing a stint as a CIFAR Junior Academy Fellow working with Thomas Jennewein and our own Kevin Resch at the Institute for Quantum Computing in Waterloo.
Zhenfu Zhang moved to Claudiu Gradinaru's biophysics group.
Sacha Kocsis, who did his M.Sc. with us, went on to do a Ph.D. with Geoff Pryde at Griffith University.
Alexandra Mech spent a 2-week "secondment" visiting us from the group of Anton Zeilinger in Vienna.

Chris Paul is now an official mountain-biking bum.
Zach Medendorp was torn between teacher's college and medical school the last time I spoke to him.
I've lost touch with Adam Weir.
Florian Wolfgramm, collaborator and sometime visitor, is still a student of Morgan Mitchell at ICFO, Barcelona.
Rob Adamson is now a research assistant professor at Dalhousie (Ph.D. 2008).
Jalani Fox Kanem (Ph.D. 2006, and then a postdoc with Ed Hinds, Imperial College, London), went to ScotiaBank, where he is toiling away to complete the destruction of the global financial markets..
Jeff Lundeen (Ph.D. 2006), after a postdoc with Ian Walmsley, Oxford, and a short stay with Morgan Mitchell's group at ICFO, Barcelona, was a Research Associate at NRC, working on Quantum Information and Metrology with Photons, before taking up a Canada Research Chair at Ottawa.
Ana Jofre (Ph.D. 2004; then a postdoc at NIST); spent a number of years as an Asst. Prof. at UNC Charlotte since Fall '07), but really an artist, and eventually returned to Toronto to complete an MFA before rejoining professorial life in the Department of Creative Arts and Technologies at SUNY Polytechnic Institute.
Stefan Myrskog (Ph.D. 2003; pdf with Joseph Thywissen, and then with Ted Sargent and Peter Smith in ECE) is now Chief Scientist at Morgan Solar.
Kevin Resch (1997-PhD 2002); did a postdoc with Anton Zeilinger, and one with Andrew White; now Acting Director of IQC and a professor in the Physics Department at Waterloo)
Jason Ng (M.Sc. 2008)
Xiaoxian Liu: Sideband engineering and adiabatic control methods in an optical lattice (M.Sc. 2007)
Masoud Mohseni (M.Sc. 2002; Ph.D. with Daniel Lidar; became a postdoc in the Aspuru-Guzik group at Harvard, and then joined the quantum machine learning effort at google)
Brock Wilson (moved to D-Wave Systems).
Fan Wang (M.Sc. 2005), switched research areas to work with Young-June Kim
Sal Maone
Reza Mir (M.Sc. 2003)
Lauren Segal (1999-2000); completed her M.Sc. and is now a mezzo-soprano with the Canadian Opera Company.
Chris Dimas (1998-9); became an optical design engineer at EFOS (EXFO)


Former postdocs and senior visitors:

Aharon Brodutch spent three years as a CQIQC Prize Postdoc with us before founding Entangled Networks in 2021.
Kent Bonsma-Fisher spent two years as a postdoc with us before moving to the National Research Council in 2020.
Oktay Göktas spent 2017-2018 with us during his sabbatical, and then founded a quantum-information startup, AgnostiQ, where he continues to collaborate with some group members on quantum software.

Alex Hayat, Banting and CQIQC and CIFAR postdoc with us from 2011-2014, is now a professor at the Technion.
Luciano Cruz is now a professor at UABC in Sao Paulo.
Fabian Torres, visiting "predoc" from Carlos Saavedra's group at the Center for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information, Concepcion, is now at the Universidad de la Frontera in Temuco, Chile.
Morgan Mitchell (postdoc 2002-2004; now a Research Assistant Professor at the Institut de Ciències Fotòniques in Barcelona)
Marcelo Martinelli (pdf 2003; now an Asst. Prof. at University of Sao Paulo)
Matt Partlow (postdoctoral fellow)
An-Ning Zhang went on to do a postdoc with Alex Lvovsky at IQIS and the Department of Physics & Astronomy, Calgary.
Satya Ram Mishra (2000-2001); now back at the Centre for Advanced Technology, Indore, India.
Jung Bog Kim (1997-8; back at the Korea National Univ. of Education)
Han Seb Moon (1997; KNUE)
Hyun Ah Kim (1997-8; KNUE)

Former undergrads:
Takahiro Tow worked with us in 2019-2020.
Chris Hudson spent summer 2019 working in our lab.
Andrew Hardy worked with us in 2018-9, and is back in 2019-2020.
Yufeng Ye did a reading course with us in 2018-9.
Bryce Wu worked with us in 2017-8.
Sepehr Ebadi was back working with us in 2017.
Matt Walker worked with us in 2016
Sepehr Ebadi worked with us in 2015
Anthony Ardizzi worked with us in the summer of 2014
Ilan Tzitrin worked with us in the summer of 2014
Ian Kivlichan worked with us in 2014
Chao Wang worked with us in the summer of 2013
Jamie Woodbury worked with us in the winter of 2013.
James Bateman worked with us for 2012-2013.
Aysha Abdel-Aziz worked with us during 2012.
Kelsey Allen worked with us in the summer of 2012.
Zach Vernon worked with us in the summer of 2012 and is now the head of hardware at Xanadu.
Lee Liu did his Eng Sci senior thesis with us in 2011-2012.
Benoit Cyrenne spent the summer of 2011 working with us.
Julian Schmidt and
Patrik Rath spent 2010-2011 as exchange students in our lab; both are now finishing their studies in Germany.
Assaf Bar-Natan, from the Abelard School, also volunteered in our lab during 2010-2011; he is now a student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Aleksander Kubica worked with us for the summer of 2010 on a CQIQC fellowship; he is now a student at Cal Tech.
Phil Russ worked with us for the summer of 2010 on an NSERC fellowship.
Timur Rvachov worked with us for the summer of 2010 on an NSERC fellowship; he is now a student at MIT.
Sylvain Ravets (stagiaire from ENS-Cachan)
Anselm Schultes (exchange student from Uni. Würzburg)
Boris Braverman worked with us on and off through 2010, and is now a grad student at MIT.
Nick Chisholm is now a physics grad student with Misha Lukin at Harvard.
Eva Markowski is now a student at Harvard Law
Amanda O'Halloran
Ardavan Darabi did some excellent work with us as a Ph.D. student before moving to the UK to become a financier, art thief, and international man of mystery.
Ahmed al-Mehairi
Nick Miladinovic
Nan Yang
Michael Sitwell
Curtis Leung
Arthur Chang
Rebecca Nie
Eugen Friesen
Christian Rewitz
Max Touzel
Sabrina Liao
Shannon Wang
Ray Gao
Alexander Thobe
Jan Hennneberger, Universität Würzburg (visiting 2004-5)
Enguerrand Menard, ENS-Lyon (visiting 2005)
Alpha Gaëtan, Univ. Orsay (visiting 2005)
Karen Saucke (2003)
Guillaume Foucaud (summer 2002); continuing at Ecole Superieure d'Optique, Orsay.
Jai Grover (summer 2001); completed his B.Sc. at Toronto, and is now a Ph.D. student at Cambridge.
David Glenn (2000-2001); completed M.Sc. at U. of T. with Prof. Daniel Lidar in Fall '02, and now completing his Ph.D. at Yale University.
David Caplan (summer 2000); completed B.Sc. UBC and now a graduate student at University of Illinois.
Laurent Lombard (summer 2000); back at ESO - Orsay.
Laure Wawrezinieck (summer 2000); back at ENS-Cachan.
Naomi Ginsberg (1999-2000); currently finishing her Ph.D. with Lene Hau at Harvard -- see Physics News Update and Nature News&Views for stories about her work; moving on to a postdoctoral position in the Fleming group at Berkeley, where she now leads her own research group in the Department of Chemistry.
Phillip Hadley (1998-2000); after working with Paul Kwiat at Los Alamos National Labs, and as a metrology engineer at CVI Laser, completed his undergraduate degree at U of T and was about to begin an internship at LAM Research until he got stopped at the U.S. border.
Sarah Karram (summer 1999; at Trent University)
Magali Davenet (summer 1999; at the Ecole Superieure d'Optique, Orsay)
Kevin Lee (summer 1998)
Jason McKeever (1997-8; Ph.D. at Cal Tech -- see Physics News Update for story on his work -- then did a postdoc with Christophe Salomon before returning to Toronto as a pdf with Joseph Thywissen)
Roy Wang (summer 1997; moved to JDS Uniphase; spent some time attempting to sell his body after that didn't last; moved into sales engineering at Human Solutions after that didn't last either)
Navin Bhat (jointly with Prof. Paul Brumer during summer 1997; now a Ph.D. student with Prof. John Sipe )
Maryna Savchenko



Click on photo for access to our last group-photo gallery, courtesy of Reza Mir.

Or click here for the anonymous, candid group photo.


Click above to see a photo of our trapped atoms.



For more information and assorted links, see

Aephraim Steinberg's home page.


This site is maintained by inertia, but comments may be addressed to Aephraim M. Steinberg.