Benjamin Lev

Assistant Professor

Ph.D., Caltech, 2006

Professor Benjamin Lev received his bachelor’s degree in physics from Princeton University in 1999, graduating magna cum laude. He earned a Ph.D. from Caltech in 2005, working in the quantum optics group of Hideo Mabuchi. His thesis research involved the development of novel atom chip techniques for the tight confinement and manipulation ultracold atoms and Bose-Einstein condensates. Major projects included the study and realization of novel atom optical devices---such as 1-D ring traps and atom mirrors made from common hard drives---and the development of systems for atom chip-based cavity quantum electrodynamics (cQED). These atom-cavity chips are capable of providing robust and scalable architectures for quantum information processing and quantum communication networks. He won the Everhart Distinguished Graduate Student Lectureship in 2004, and his public lecture on the atom chip may be viewed here.

As a National Research Council postdoctoral research fellow (2006-2007), Professor Lev worked with Jun Ye at JILA (Boulder) on the Stark deceleration of polar molecules. His work focused on the magnetic trapping of ground state polar molecules in the presence of tunable electric fields, which he and his JILA colleagues demonstrated for the first time in 2006. This technique will enable the study of dipole-dipole collisions and is a crucial step towards cooling the trapped polar molecules to the ultracold regime. In addition, Lev conducted a theoretical study of the feasibility of laser cooling molecules to using cavity QED effects, and performed precision spectroscopy on the OH molecule’s ground state. This latter study provided a tenfold improvement on astrophysical constraints of fundamental constant variation as well as uncovered candidate molecular qubits for use in molecular quantum computing architectures.

Professor Lev joined the Department of Physics at Illinois in January 2008, and completed remodeling and equipping his laboratory in September 2008.

Other Activities

Lev's research program explores exotic matter through the quantum manipulation of dipolar atoms.  Highly magnetic atoms, such as dysprosium, offer the ability to create strongly correlated matter in both atomic physics and quantum optics settings. In addition, these atoms will form the key ingredient in novel devices possessing unsurpassed sensitivity and resolution for the microscopy of strongly correlated materials, such as high-temperature superconductors.

The Lev group is developing the technology to perform laser cooling—and subsequent trapping in atom chips and optical lattices—of the lanthanide atom dysprosium. His group recently demonstrated the first magneto-optical cooling and trapping of Dy. This will lead to three research projects: the investigation of quantum liquid crystal physics in 2D fermoinic dipolar lattices; the exploration of non-equilibrium quantum phase transitions in many-body cavity QED; and the development of atom chip microscopy at the greater than 10^–7 magnetic flux quantum level.

Prospective graduate students and postdocs are welcome to contact Professor Lev at benlev@illinois.edu.

For more information:

Lev Research Group

Honors and awards:

• Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Award (AFOSR YIP grant)
• NRC Research Associateship (JILA/NIST postdoc)
• Everhart Distinguished Graduate Student Lectureship
• Allen Goodrich Schenstone Prize for Outstanding Work in Experimental Physics, Department of Physics, Princeton University

Selected Publications:

• S. Gopalakrishnan, B. Lev, and P. Goldbart, Emergent crystallinity and frustration with Bose-Einstein condensates in multimode cavities, Nature Physics 5, 845-850 (2009).
• B. Fregoso, K. Sun, E. Fradkin, and B. Lev, Biaxial nematic phases in ultracold dipolar Fermi gases, New Journal of Physics 11, 103003 (2009).
• H.J. Kimble, B. Lev, and J. Ye, Optical interferometers with reduced sensitivity to thermal noise, Physical Review Letters 101, 260602 (2008).
• M. Lara, B. Lev, and J. Bohn, Loss of molecules in magneto-electrostatic traps due to nonadiabatic transitions, Physical Review A 78, 033433 (2008)
• B. Sawyer, B. Lev, E. Hudson, B. Stuhl, M. Lara, J. Bohn, J. Ye, Magneto-electrostatic trapping of ground state OH molecules, Physical Review Letters 98, 253002 (2007). Cover of Physical Review Letters (22 June 2007); Science Editor's Choice (13 July 2007).
• B. Lev, E. Meyer, E. Hudson, B. Sawyer, J. Bohn, and J. Ye, OH hyperfine ground state: from precision measurement to molecular qubits, Physical Review A. 74, 061402R (2006)
• P.E. Barclay, B. Lev, K. Srinivasan, O. Painter, H. Mabuchi, Integration of Fiber Coupled High-Q Silicon Nitride Microdisks with Magnetostatic Atom Chips, Applied Physics Letters 89, 131108 (2006).
• B. Lev, K. Srinivasan, P. Barclay, O. Painter, and H. Mabuchi, Feasibility of Detecting Single Atoms using Photonic Bandgap Cavities, Nanotechnology 15, S556 (2004).
• A. Hopkins, B. Lev, H. Mabuchi, Proposed Magneto-Electrostatic Ring Trap for Neutral Atoms, Physical Review A 70, 053616 (2004).
• B. Lev, Y. Lassailly, C. Lee, A. Scherer, and H. Mabuchi, Atom Mirror Etched from a Hard Drive, Applied Physics Letters 83, 395-397, (2003).