Please join us in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the Technological Institute for a Distinguished Seminar with Dr. Dana Anderson. This event will take place in Cohen Commons.

After seminar there will be a reception with refreshements from 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm. We look forward to seeing you there!

Abstract: A driven matter-wave oscillator provides the starting point for this introduction to circuit design for atomic quantum sensors and signal-processing systems. Functionally analogous to a laser, and more directly to a microwave transistor oscillator, it brings together a source of power, an active gain element, and frequency-selective feedback. Atomic systems have established roles in applications such as timekeeping, inertial sensing, radio-frequency detection, and quantum computing. The motivation behind this talk is to develop engineering principles, design heuristics, and computational tools that allow systems designers to build on those capabilities. The aspiration is a design practice in which knowledge and components can be reused across applications, supporting increasingly sophisticated systems. To this end, I will introduce alternating currents of electrically neutral atoms and the associated AC matter waves that interact with a sensed environment and carry signals. AC waves have a classically measurable phase and an oscillation frequency independent of the constituent particle energy. Their propagation and interaction with potential structures lead naturally to a description in terms of impedance, providing analytical tools and physical intuition familiar from microwave circuit design.In the implementations considered here, optical potentials define the circuit structures through which the atomic signals propagate. Nonlinear interactions among atoms provide a route to transistor action: a small matter-wave current can modulate the impedance presented to a much larger one. An appropriately configured interaction provides phase-sensitive gain, amplifying one signal quadrature while attenuating the orthogonal quadrature, with a Bose-Einstein condensate supplying energy to the signal. Combining gain with feedback leads to the driven oscillator introduced at the outset. The oscillator thus serves both as a source of AC matter waves and as a worked example of circuit design. I will conclude with examples illustrating how the same concepts can be applied to sensing and signal processing, and how computational design tools connect physical parameters to device requirements.

Bio: Dr. Dana Z. Anderson is the founder and Chief Science Officer of Infleqtion, where he guides the company's scientific vision and quantum technology strategy across quantum computing, sensing, and precision timing. Over more than four decades, Anderson has advanced scientific discovery and technology through contributions ranging from early work on the LIGO gravitational-wave project to breakthroughs in optical neural networks, ultracold-atom systems, quantum sensing, and precision measurement. His work has helped translate fundamental advances in atomic physics into technologies with practical and commercial applications.