Starting a Technology Revolution

In a small room on the first floor of Lyman Labs are two rectangular tables covered in mirrors, amplifiers, fibers, and lenses. “Organized chaos would be a good description,” says Christie Chiu, a PhD candidate in physics. All the bits and pieces serve a single purpose: to manipulate and control laser beams strong enough to load and hold anywhere from 80 to 1,000 lithium atoms in a 2-dimensional lattice that is hidden away in a vacuum-chamber made of stainless steel and glass.

On a computer, Chiu pulls up a photograph of the lithium atoms held in the lattices, and one can easily see the mesh of atoms. “The fact that we can see the underlying lattice in this photograph without any image processing is already amazing,” says Chiu. Generating such a clear image was a challenging yet necessary step in Chiu’s research. “It means we know where the atoms are, and we can make reliable measurements,” she explains. As stunning as the lattice is, the properties of high-temperature superconductors that it will allow Chiu to explore are even cooler.

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