[Seminar] "Quantum control over radioactive ions and nuclei" by Prof. Eric Hudson (UCLA)

Title: Quantum control over radioactive ions and nuclei

Speaker: Prof. Eric Hudson (UCLA)

Abstract:

In 1976, Kroger and Reich uncovered evidence of a remarkably low-energy nuclear state in radioactive 229Th, sparking decades of intrigue over its potential for laser control of a nucleus. After nearly half a century of searching, the nuclear transition has finally be found. I’ll describe our teams journey to develop and use  thorium-doped crystals [1], measuring the transition energy to be 8.355733(2)stat(10)sys eV [2], as well as recent progress using both transparent ThF4 [3] and opaque ThO2 [4] thins films and the possibilities offered by the crystalline environment for constructing a nuclear clock.
I’ll then connect this to our work developing trapped-ion quantum information processors using radioactive 133Ba+ where long-lived qubits, high-fidelity optical control, and integrated photonics pave the way for scalable quantum computers architectures [5,6,7]. Together, these efforts represent two powerful paths toward quantum-enhanced sensing, next-generation nuclear clocks, precision tests of fundamental physics, and scalable quantum computers that leverage the unique features of radioactive atoms.

1.W.G. Rellergert et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 200802 (2010)
2. R. Elwell et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 133, 013201 (2024)
3. C. Zhang et al., Nature 636, 603 (2024)
4. R. Elwell et al., arXiv: 2506.03018 (2025)
5. D. Hucul et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 1000501 (2017)
6. J. Christensen et al., npj Quant. Inf. 6, 35 (2020)
7. S. Jain et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 133, 260601 (2024)