Gravity is a fixture of our everyday lives, particularly apparent when we drop a piece of toast on the kitchen floor or trip over an unseen step. Not surprisingly, physicists have studied gravity heavily over the centuries. The best take to date is Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which has been confirmed by every observation to date.

And yet, the theory of general relativity is incompatible with our best understanding of the microscopic world—quantum mechanics. Coming up with a way to reconcile the two is one of the greatest challenges of modern physics. Although many theories of quantum gravity have been proposed, experimental tests are extremely challenging: Gravity governs huge things, like planetary motion, while quantum mechanics deals more in tiny things, like atoms and subatomic particles. Promising new experiments are poised to use really cold atoms and their quantum interference to spot tiny effects that might be due to quantum gravity.

In this episode of Relatively Certain, JQI Adjunct Fellow Marianna Safronova and JQI Fellow Charles Clark return to discuss the limits of our understanding of gravity, and how new experiments with atom interferometers may be the key to not only a higher-precision understanding of gravity but also possible new physics.

This episode of Relatively Certain was produced by Dina Genkina, Chris Cesare, Bailey Bedford, and Emily Edwards. Music featured in this episode includes Picturebook by Dave Depper, Dark Water by Xylo-Ziko, 80’s by Crowander, Disquiet by Bio Unit, and Geiger-Muller by Metre. Sound effects adapted from YleArkisto(link is external)/CC BY 3.0. Relatively Certain is a production of the Joint Quantum Institute, a research partnership between the University of Maryland and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and you can find it on iTunes, Google Play, Soundcloud or Spotify.

The Secrets Atoms Hold, Part 2: Gravity

We all know that diamonds can hold great sentimental (and monetary) value. As luck may have it, diamonds—particularly defective ones, with little errors in their crystal structure—also hold great scientific value. The defects have properties that can only be described by quantum mechanics, and researchers are working on harnessing these properties to pick up on tiny signals coming from individual biological cells.

In this episode of Relatively Certain, Dina sits down with defective diamond expert Ronald Walsworth, the founding director of the Quantum Technology Center at the University of Maryland (UMD), as well as Minta Martin professor of electrical and computer engineering and professor of physics at the UMD. Walsworth is also a member of the Institute for Research in Electronics & Applied Physics and a Fellow of the Joint Quantum Institute. Walsworth explains how diamond defects can be used as superb magnetic field sensors and discusses recent strides toward using them to image the insides of individual cells. More details on these advances can be found in two recent publications from Walsworth’s lab.

This episode of Relatively Certain was produced by Dina Genkina, Chris Cesare and Emily Edwards. Music featured in this episode includes Picturebook by Dave Depper, The Jitters and Apogee by Metre and Examples by Ketsa, with sound effects by Brian Little. Relatively Certain is a production of the Joint Quantum Institute, a research partnership between the University of Maryland and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and you can find it on iTunes, Google Play, Soundcloud or Spotify.

Diamonds Are a Quantum Sensing Scientist’s Best Friend

In this episode, we look back at the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when impending lab closures were threatening scientific progress and graduate student careers. We sit down with Laird Egan, then a graduate student in physics at JQI, and hear about how he and his lab mates managed to turn their ion-based quantum computer into a remote-controlled experiment in a matter of weeks. We also learn how they used their newly remote lab to achieve a milestone in quantum computing.

This episode of Relatively Certain was produced by Dina Genkina, Chris Cesare, and Bailey Bedford. Music featured in this episode includes Picturebook by Dave Depper, New Launch by Independent Licensing Music Collective, Sophisticated Savage by Voodoo Suite and Last Bar Guests by Lobo Loco. Relatively Certain is a production of the Joint Quantum Institute, a research partnership between the University of Maryland and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and you can find it on iTunes, Google Play, Soundcloud, or Spotify.

Science in Quarantine: A Rush to Go Remote

While browsing the web, you might not realize that the security of your online transactions is guaranteed by a hard-to-crack math problem called factoring. But this security could evaporate in an instant—if a big enough quantum computer is built. Computers that store information in quantum hardware—like individual ions, atoms or photons—would make quick work of the factoring problem and threaten the safety of current protocols.

To thwart the threat posed by possible quantum computers, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has been running a kind of competition. NIST provides standard references for all sorts of things, from the meter to the kilogram to baking chocolate (NIST isn’t dictating how your chocolate should be baked, just providing a reference for food labs so they can measure their ingredients accurately). But for this competition, they needed to weed through competing quantum-proof online security algorithms. More than 80 candidates faced off through several rounds of elimination. The winners of this showdown, announced by NIST on July 5, 2022, will go on to be standardized and used to create new internet protocols.

In this episode of Relatively Certain, Dina Genkina chats with Lily Chen, a mathematician who heads NIST’s Cryptographic Technology Group and who led the algorithm competition, to get the play-by-play on how standards get made. They are joined by Andrew Childs—a professor of computer science at the University of Maryland, a co-director of the Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science and the director of the NSF Quantum Leap Challenge Institute for Robust Quantum Simulation—who provides background on the threat that quantum computing poses to our existing encryption methods.

This episode of Relatively Certain was produced by Dina Genkina, Chris Cesare, and Emily Edwards. Music featured in this episode includes Picturebook by Dave Depper, Dusty Vinyl by HoliznaPATREON, Say Goodbye to Lunar Gravity by Jack Adkins, and Inspiring Ambience by Scott Holmes Music.  Relatively Certain is a production of the Joint Quantum Institute, a research partnership between the University of Maryland and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and you can find it on iTunes, Google Play, Soundcloud or Spotify.

Quantum-Safe Algorithms Face Off in NIST’s Cryptography Showdown

Chaos. Time travel. Quantum entanglement. Each may play a role in figuring out whether black holes are the universe’s ultimate information scramblers.

In this episode of Relatively Certain, Chris sits down with Brian Swingle, a QuICS Fellow and assistant professor of physics at UMD, to learn about some of the latest theoretical research on black holes—and how experiments to test some of these theories are getting tantalizingly close.

This episode of Relatively Certain was produced by Chris Cesare, Emily Edwards and Dina Genkina. It features music by Dave Depper and Podington Bear. Relatively Certain is a production of the Joint Quantum Institute, a research partnership between the University of Maryland and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and you can find it on iTunes, Google Play or Soundcloud.

Black holes: The ultimate cosmic whisks

In many situations, chaos makes it nearly impossible to predict what will happen next. Nowhere is this more apparent than in weather forecasts, which are notorious for their unreliability. But the clever application of artificial intelligence can help reign in some chaotic systems, making them more predictable than ever before.

In this episode of Relatively Certain, Dina sits down with Michelle Girvan, a physics professor at the University of Maryland (UMD), to talk about how artificial intelligence can help predict chaotic behavior, as well as how combining machine learning with conventional physics models might yield even better predictions and insights into both methods.

Girvan collaborated with several colleagues at UMD on these chaos-taming projects, including physics professor Edward Ott, mathematics professor Brian Hunt, physics postdoctoral researcher Zhixin Lu, physics graduate students Jaideep Pathak and Sarthak Chandra, and physics undergraduate students Alexander Wikner and Rebeckah Fusol.

This episode of Relatively Certain was produced by Dina Genkina, Chris Cesare and Emily Edwards. It features music by Dave Depper, David Hilowitz, Blue Dot Sessions and Scanglobe. “Lorenz Attractor” is used courtesy of Michelle Wilber. Prints are available for purchase at FineArtAmerica.com. Relatively Certain is a production of the Joint Quantum Institute, a research partnership between the University of Maryland and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and you can find it on iTunes, Google Play or Soundcloud.

Taming chaos with physics and AI

Software just might be the unsung hero of physics labs. In this episode of Relatively Certain, Dina sits down with JQI postdoctoral researcher and programming aficionado Chris Billington to talk about his passion project—a piece of experimental control software that’s gaining popularity in labs here at the University of Maryland and around the world. 

The tool, called labscript, is a testament to the strengths of open source programming. It was originally developed by Billington in collaboration with Philip Starkey, Martijn Jasperse, Shaun Johnstone, and Russell Anderson in the labs of Lincoln Turner and Kristian Helmerson at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. 

Billington would like to dedicate this episode to Shaun Johnstone, who passed away while it was in production.

This episode of Relatively Certain was produced by Dina Genkina, Chris Cesare, and Emily Edwards. It features music by Dave Depper and Podington Bear. Relatively Certain is a production of the Joint Quantum Institute, a research partnership between the University of Maryland and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. You can find it on iTunes, Google Play or Soundcloud. Relatively Certain and the Joint Quantum Institute do not intend to endorse the products discussed in this podcast.

Labs IRL: A Craving for Code

Topology—the mathematical study of shapes that describes how a donut differs from a donut hole—has turned out to be remarkably relevant to understanding our physical world. For decades, it’s captured the hearts and minds of physicists, who have spent that time uncovering just how deep the connection between topology and physics runs. Among many other things, they’ve unearthed a prediction, born of topology, for a new particle with promising applications to quantum computing. 

In this episode of Relatively Certain, Dina Genkina sits down with JQI Fellow Jay Sau, an associate professor of physics at UMD, and Johnpierre Paglione, a professor of physics at UMD and the director of the Quantum Materials Center. They take a trip back to the 1980s, when the story of topology in physics began, and arrive at a recent discovery by Paglione and his collaborators of a (possible) topological superconductor.

This episode of Relatively Certain was produced by Dina Genkina, Chris Cesare, and Emily Edwards. It features music by Dave Depper, Frequency Decree, Chad Crouch and Scott Holmes. Relatively Certain is a production of the Joint Quantum Institute, a research partnership between the University of Maryland and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and you can find it on iTunes, Google Play, Soundcloud or Spotify.

Donuts, Donut Holes and Topological Superconductors

There’s a big unsolved mystery in physics: The cosmic balance sheet for matter in our universe just doesn’t add up. Galaxies all over space move as though they are much heavier than they appear. Scientists postulate that they are full of stuff we cannot see, stuff that they call dark matter.

To figure out what that stuff might be, scientists have turned their attention to atoms, which are familiar, well-understood, and in abundant supply right here on Earth. Atoms have regular heartbeats that can be measured extremely precisely in experiments, and some theories about dark matter suggest that its interactions with normal matter might change the frequency of this telltale ticking. Checking whether atoms ever skip a beat can tell us whether dark matter is present, and it might even reveal that things we’ve come to think of as constant—like the speed of light or the charge of the electron—are actually changing ever so slightly over time.

In this episode of Relatively Certain, Dina Genkina sits down with JQI Adjunct Fellow Marianna Safronova, a physics professor at the University of Delaware, and JQI Fellow Charles Clark, an adjunct physics professor at UMD and a fellow of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, to talk about how precision measurements with atoms might shed some light on matter that’s otherwise dark.

This episode of Relatively Certain was produced by Dina Genkina, Chris Cesare, and Emily Edwards. Music featured in this episode includes Picturebook by Dave Depper, Future You by Chad Crouch, Surge and Swell by Pictures of the Floating World, and The Beauty of Maths by Meydn. Relatively Certain is a production of the Joint Quantum Institute, a research partnership between the University of Maryland and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and you can find it on iTunes, Google Play, Soundcloud or Spotify.

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