Quantum Information Science within particle and nuclear physics have broad applications and implications for future research and development. Our group is particularly interested in sensing devices and solid-state tools and techniques for measuring and controlling quantum states that can be used in the probing process of matter and vacuum fluctuations on the partonic scale, as well as the density and flux of energy and momentum of these states and the space-time they inhabit. Quantum sensing devices also have diverse applications in areas that include communication, imaging, medicine, deep-space exploration, national security, nuclear science, astrophysics, as well as particle physics. Their implementation in nuclear and particle physics applications for particle detections is expanding the scope of experimental and theoretical studies to connect to quantum information as a whole. 

Understanding the nucleus and nucleon quantum bits is an essential step in the evolution of the theoretical and experimental approach to the field of scattering processes as well new methods of probing the nature of the universe. This new research is a direct benefit to the integration of quantum information, quantum computing technologies, and nuclear science. Fabricating and deploying quantum sensors— including those in solid-state, superconducting, atomic, nuclear, and optical systems— utilizes a range of technologies and breadth of expertise.

Our group is especially interested in new techniques in solid-state NMR to manage and manipulate quantum states. This work requires low temperatures and high magnetic fields along with RF and microwave technology used to gain insight into the quantum information encoded in composite systems. This quantum information refers to the information contained in the states of the quanta in a system. All processes can be reduced to a composite of quantum bits, or qbits, and their influence. Much of the study of quantum information entails reducing complex entangled systems to simpler systems that can be understood in terms of networks of qbits in a system connected to measuring apparatuses that can exploit the knowledge of the qbit configurations. An example of such a technique is the dynamic nuclear polarization of an ensemble at low temperatures and high magnetic fields where the nuclear relaxation rates are slow to the nuclear qbit is preserved for a longer time. This process reduces the quantum complexity of the sample by aligning its quantum spins. We do this in preparation for a large-scale scattering experiment that exploits the information we have about the mutual direction of the spins allowing us to probe deep into the heart of these polarized nucleons to try to understand how the partons, the smallest nuclear qbits, encode the nuclear spin that we observe.