Robert Lewis-Swan, an assistant professor in the Homer L. Dodge Department of Physics and Astronomy in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oklahoma, contributed to a study led by physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) published in Science. As described in a news release, the research team “linked together, or ‘entangled,’ the mechanical motion and electronic properties of a tiny blue crystal, giving it a quantum edge in measuring electric fields with record sensitivity that may enhance understanding of the universe.”
At OU, Lewis-Swan collaborated closely with the experimental team to devise a "time-reversal" protocol – a method to harness quantum entanglement to increase the precision of a measurement – at the core of the experiment.
“We also developed a theoretical model that enabled us to understand the experimental results,” he said. “We wanted to be very sure we understood what the limiting factors were in the experiment, so we could confidently claim our results were benefiting from quantum entanglement.”
A summary of the research and link to the article is available via NIST.
