Research Areas |
Shining Light on Quantum Worlds
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How does living matter organize, synchronize, and coordinate its fundamental quantum constituents across many orders of magnitude in the spatiotemporal scale?
The Quantum Biology Lab seeks to understand phonon, exciton, polariton, and plasmon correlations in biomolecular environments that have implications for biological structure and function. Our research pushes at the boundaries of conventional dogmas in the life sciences, and in the application of physics to biosystems, to uncover new insights with the potential for biomedical impact. Perhaps we will ultimately elucidate the foundational question: What is life? |
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Fundamental Theory Development
Electrodynamic Synchronization of Biomolecular BehaviorOut-of-equilibrium dynamics generate giant collective dipoles in biosystems and their aqueous environments, producing nonlinear amplification cascades through the terahertz (THz) region and beyond. The implications for electrodynamic communication in neural behavior and conscious processing abound.
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Superradiant Effects in Biological
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Entanglement and Plasmonic Allostery in Complex Protein and DNA SystemsThe tantalizing possibility that enzymes may use fundamentally quantum electronic correlations arising from van der Waals fluctuations to synchronize catalytic processes in the transition state opens new vistas for the quantum information processing capacity of living matter.
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Enabling Experiments
Terahertz spectroscopy
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Development of fast detectors for extant and emergent pathogensThe identification and discrimination of highly symmetric architectures of light-absorbing molecules exhibiting cooperative superradiant effects in diverse viral and bacterial systems could lead to a revolution in our ability to optically detect pathogens without costly chemical testing.
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Nonlinear spectroscopies and multi-wave mixing experimentsIn collaboration with colleagues at Northwestern, we envision the next generation of quantum computational tools derived from the robust maintenance of delicate coherences at high temperatures, with the goal of transferring these quantum correlations in biomatter to the polarization states of a photonic readout.
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