Brian L. DeMarco
Assistant professor of Physics
Professor Brian DeMarco received his B.A. in physics, with a mathematics minor, from the State University of New York at Geneseo in 1996, graduating summa cum laude. As an undergraduate researcher, he worked on calibrating and developing neutron detectors for laser driven inertial confinement fusion experiments.
He earned a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Colorado at Boulder (2001), where he extended magnetic trapping and evaporative cooling techniques used to produce atomic Bose–Einstein condensates to create the first quantum degenerate Fermi gas of atoms. This achievement merited Science magazine's imprimatur as one of the top ten scientific discoveries of 1999 and earned DeMarco the first JILA Scientific Achievement Award. In 2002, he received the American Physical Society's Division of Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics Thesis Award.
From 2001–2003, he was a National Research Council postdoctoral research fellow, working with David Wineland at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (Boulder) on quantum computing experiments with trapped atomic ions. DeMarco's work with the Ion Storage Group focused on developing improved quantum logic elements and "scaling-up" the complexity of quantum information processing tasks with trapped ions.
Professor DeMarco joined the Department of Physics at Illinois in August 2003. In October 2005, he was among 18 young physics researchers selected as finalists in a global competition to participate in Amazing Light: Visions for Discovery, an international symposium focused on exploring and advancing innovative research in physics and astronomy inspired by, and honoring the leadership and vision of, Charles Townes, winner of the 1964 Nobel Prize in physics. The symposium brought together renowned scholars and researchers, including 20 Nobel laureates, to explore the extraordinary challenges of 21st Century physics and cosmology.
DeMarco won first place in the Quantum Physics category for his presentation on “Quantum Simulation using Ultra-cold Atoms,” which described his research aimed at realizing quantum simulation using atoms trapped in an optical lattice.
Research Area: experimental atomic, molecular, and optical physics; quantum information science; atomic Bose–Einstein condensates and Fermi gases.
A double magneto-optic trap (MOT) developed by DeMarco to trap and cool 40K atoms. The transfer tube permits differential pressure between the first MOT (left) and second MOT (right) and hexapole magnetic confinement for atoms in transit between the two glass cells. Atoms in the second MOT are transferred into a Ioffe-Pritchard-type magnetic trap, where they are evaporatively cooled by a microwave field delivered by a small coil. After the atoms are released from the trap, the shadow that the atom cloud casts onto a resonant probe beam is imaged onto a charge-coupled device (CCD) array. (B. DeMarco and D.S. Jin, "Onset of Fermi degeneracy in a trapped atomic gas," Science 285, 1703 [1999]).
Selected Publications
Langer, C, et al. Long-lived qubit memory using atomic ions. Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 060502-1-4 (2005).
Ozeri, R, et al. Hyperfine coherence in the presence of spontaneous photon scattering. Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 030403-1-4 (2005).
DeMarco, B, Lannert, S, Vishveshwara, S, and Wei, T-C. Structure and stability of Mott-insulator shells of bosons trapped in an optical lattice. Phys. Rev. A 71, 063601-1-11 (2005).
Schaetz, T, et al. Towards a scalable quantum computer/simulator based on trapped ions. Appl. Phys. B 79, 979-986 (2004).
D. Leibfried, B. DeMarco, V. Meyer, D. Lucas, M. Barrett, J. Britton, W.m. Itano, B. Kelenkovic, C. Langer, T. Rosenband, and D.J. Wineland, "Experimental demonstration of a robust, high-fidelity geometric two ion-qubit phase gate," Nature 422, 412 (2003). See also A. Steane, "Logic gateway," Nature 422, 397 (2003).
A. Ben-Kish, B. DeMarco, V. Meyer, M. Rowe, J. Britton, W.M. Itano, B.M. Jelenkovi, C. Langer, D. Leibfried, T. Rosenband, and D.J. Wineland, "Experimental demonstration of a technique to generate arbitrary quantum superposition states of a harmonically bound Spin-1/2 particle," Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 037902-1 (2003).
honors and awards
- Named one of Science magazine's annual "Breakthrough of the Year: 1999) "Top Ten Scientific Breakthroughs: Onset of Fermi degeneracy in a trapped atomic gas," Science 286, 2239-2243 (1999)
- JILA Scientific Achievement Award, 2000
- American Physical Society DAMOP Dissertation Award, 2002
- Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Program Award, 2004
- National Science Foundation CAREER Award, 2004
- 1st Place, "Quantum Physics" category, Amazing Light: Visions for Discovery, 2005
- Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship, 2006
- Center for Advanced Study Beckman Fellow, University of Illinois, 2006–07