When lasers were invented in the 1960s, they opened new avenues for scientific discovery and everyday applications from scanners at the grocery store to corrective eye surgery. Conventional lasers control photons—individual particles of light—but over the past 20 years, scientists have invented lasers that control other fundamental particles, including phonons—individual particles of vibration or sound. Controlling phonons could open even more possibilities with lasers, such as taking advantage of unique quantum properties like entanglement.

A new squeezed phonon laser developed by researchers at the and Rochester Institute of Technology provides precise control over phonons at the nanoscale level. This could give new insights into the nature of gravity, particle acceleration, and quantum physics. In in Nature Communications, the researchers describe how they coax these individual particles of mechanical motion to behave like a laser.

, the Marie C. Wilson and Joseph C. Wilson Professor of Optical Physics with the Ģ����ý , and his collaborators first demonstrated a phonon laser by trapping and levitating phonons with an optical tweezer in a vacuum in 2019. But to make this technology useful for extremely accurate measurements, they had to overcome a key obstacle fundamental to both photon and phonon lasers: noise, or unwanted disturbances that make a signal difficult to accurately read.

“While a laser looks to the naked eye like a steady beam, there’s actually a lot of fluctuation, which causes noise when you’re using lasers for measurement,” says Vamivakas. “By pushing and pulling on a phonon laser with light in the right way, we can reduce that phonon laser fluctuation significantly.”

Specifically, the researchers were able to squeeze or reduce the thermal noise intrinsic to the phonon laser. Vamivakas says that noise reduction provides the ability to measure acceleration more accurately than techniques that use photon lasers or radio frequency waves.

Vamivakas envisions researchers using the phonon laser to obtain pinpoint accurate measurements of gravity and other forces, which could be important in applications such as navigation. Scientists have envisioned quantum compasses as more accurate, “unjammable” alternatives to GPS navigation that do not require the use of satellites, and Vamivakas is intrigued by seeing if the phonon laser could be a step toward such systems.

The research was supported by the National Science Foundation. Vamivakas’ collaborators on the paper include Ģ����ý optics PhD student Kai Zhang, RIT postdoctoral researcher Kewen Xiao, and Mishkat Bhattacharya ’05, a professor of physics at RIT.

The federal government is providing researchers at two Rochester-area universities funding to advance the future of sharing quantum information and further develop an experimental quantum network connecting their campuses. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is providing the Ģ����ý and $2 million to build new capabilities for the Rochester Quantum Network (RoQNET). This new funding is a direct result of Congressional support from Senator Schumer, Senator Gillibrand, and Representative Morelle as part of the fiscal year 2026 appropriations bill.

Ģ����ý and RIT installed RoQNET in 2024, and last year they demonstrated that they can securely transmit single photons from one campus to another over 11 miles of fiber-optic telecommunications lines. Sending communications using individual particles of light offers unprecedented levels of security, making them impregnable from being cloned or intercepted without detection and preventing bad actors from accessing sensitive data.

Now, the researchers are preparing for experiments to share entangled photons across the network, leveraging the strange and surprising principles of quantum mechanics that defy the laws of conventional physics.

“We want to exploit some of the more unique features of quantum mechanics and quantum optics, specifically the idea of quantum entanglement, where two particles of light can share properties no matter how far apart they are,” says , the Marie C. Wilson and Joseph C. Wilson Professor of Optical Physics, who leads ����dz������ٱ��’s efforts. “One of these entangled photon pairs will live at RIT and one will live at URochester, and we aim to maintain that entanglement across RoQNET.”

Vamivakas says that harnessing quantum entanglement could eventually lead to sophisticated networks of quantum computers or advanced new methods to improve the resolution of space telescopes.

While there are other experimental quantum networks across the world, Vamivakas says RoQNET offers several distinct advantages, including the ability to transmit photons over normal fiber-optic lines like those that already exist across the globe. He says RoQNET is further distinguished from other quantum networks because of ����dz������ٱ��’s expertise in quantum memory hardware and RIT’s ability to create quantum photonic integrated-circuit light sources.

“Our focus with RoQNET has been on the realization of heterogeneous entanglement between different types of qubits,” says Stefan Preble, RIT’s Bausch and Lomb Professor and PhD program director of microsystems engineering. “This funding supports further research to reach the next generation in quantum networking technologies.”

The funding will also enable hardware that will provide high school, undergraduate, and graduate students with some of their first opportunities to work with quantum optics and quantum networks.

“We are proud to be at the vanguard of the quantum revolution and thank Senator Schumer, Senator Gillibrand, and Representative Morelle for their support securing crucial federal funding to make new advances in quantum communication,” says Ģ����ý President Sarah Mangelsdorf. “Our university is committing significant time, talent, and resources into advancing quantum technologies, as evidenced by our recent investment in the transdisciplinary Center for Coherence and Quantum Science. We are fortunate to have terrific local collaborators at RIT with whom we can combine our strengths to advance the Rochester region as a hub for advanced quantum research and innovation.”

A quantum network was also recently established on Long Island, New York, between Brookhaven National Laboratory and Stony Brook University. Vamivakas, who has been partnering with the researchers downstate, likens it and RoQNET to local networks and hopes to eventually connect quantum research into a statewide network, adding other facilities in New York State, including the Air Force Research Laboratory and New York University. They will need to further advance quantum repeater technology to boost signals across such large distances, but the funding provides them with important resources to try to reach that goal. New York aims to that will serve as incubators and foster the development and commercialization of quantum technologies.

Elected officials and leaders share support for RoQNET

US Senator Charles Schumer: “I was proud to secure this funding for Ģ����ý and RIT to help develop a cutting-edge Upstate quantum network. This win-win benefits national security and boosts economic development and innovation by enabling the Rochester region to connect into similar New York-based quantum communications networks positioning New York to be a global leader in quantum communication and networking. RoQNET will stimulate quantum workforce development for K–12 and college-age students and offer learning opportunities for students enrolled in the Monroe Community College Optical Technology program. Rochester is home to world-class research institutions, and this federal investment will help Ģ����ý and RIT continue advancing cutting-edge quantum networking work. I was proud to deliver this funding so Rochester’s innovators can keep pushing the boundaries of secure communications and strengthen the region’s role as a hub for advanced technology.”

US Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: “I am proud to help deliver $2 million in funding for this quantum network expansion. Through the development of RoQNET, the Ģ����ý and Rochester Institute of Technology are at the forefront of quantum research. Quantum has the ability to fundamentally change how we engage in secure communications. The Rochester region remains a preeminent leader in advanced technologies and high-impact research activities, and I look forward to seeing the results of this partnership.”

Congressman Joe Morelle: “Quantum technology is the next frontier of innovation, and thanks to world-class research universities like Ģ����ý and RIT, Rochester will continue to lead the way in these critical technologies. I was proud to secure funding in Washington to support RoQNET, and I cannot wait to see what they discover next.”

The has awarded the Ģ����ý a $1.3 million grant for research at the forefront of how light and matter interact. The project, titled “Quantum Electrodynamics for Selective Transformations,” aims to create new chemistry using quantum light. The ambitious project has the potential to unlock new opportunities for chemical and material synthesis.

“We are thrilled to receive support from the W. M. Keck Foundation that will allow us to pursue high-risk, high-reward research that we hope will open up new frontiers at the intersection of chemistry, photonics, and quantum science,” says , the Jay Last Professor in Arts, Sciences & Engineering in the and the .

Krauss leads a team of researchers that includes , the Dean and Laura Marvin Endowed Professor in Physical Chemistry and an associate professor of optics; Dan Weix at the University of Wisconsin–Madison (and former faculty member at Ģ����ý), and Rachel Bangle at North Carolina A&T State University.

“The work of Professor Krauss and his team is an example of Rochester’s long tradition of working across cutting-edge disciplines to advance science and improve our understanding of the physical world,” says University President Sarah Mangelsdorf. “We’re grateful for the support of the W. M. Keck Foundation in recognizing the enormous potential in this research.”

Using quantum light to create new chemistry

A grand challenge in the field of chemistry is controlling chemical bond formation at any stage in a reaction.

Chemistry is governed by an established set of rules that dictate how simple molecules react with each other to form new, more complex molecules. These rules are related to how electrons are distributed in the molecules and underpin the field of synthetic chemistry. The constraints imposed by these rules have a direct impact on society because they can limit access to potential new drugs or materials. In the past, chemists have used temperature, pressure, light, and other ways to control and perform chemistry.

For the newly funded project, Ģ����ý researchers and their colleagues at other institutions seek to discover if it is possible to use the quantum light of an optical cavity to bend or break these fundamental rules of reactivity by changing how electrons are distributed. To test the idea, researchers will couple light inside an optical cavity to the electronic states of molecules, forming a hybrid light-matter state called an electron-polariton.

While polariton chemistry has the potential to alter the fundamental rules of chemical reactivity, verifying this new concept experimentally has been challenging because of the varied expertise required. To overcome that hurdle, Krauss has assembled just such a diverse team, including synthetic organic chemists, materials scientists, spectroscopists, and theoreticians, who will work to help establish this new field of research.

Krauss notes, “It isn’t often that one has the chance to discover a new set of rules that govern the makeup of matter in the universe.”

Ģ����ý the Keck Foundation

The W. M. Keck Foundation was established in 1954 in Los Angeles by William Myron Keck, founder of The Superior Oil Company. One of the nation’s largest philanthropic organizations, the W. M. Keck Foundation supports outstanding science, engineering, and medical research. The foundation also supports undergraduate education and maintains a program within Southern California to support arts and culture, education, health, and community service projects.

, a professor of physics at the and a distinguished scientist at the University’s (LLE), is part of an international team that has been awarded a prestigious €14 million (approximately $16 million USD), six-year European Research Council (ERC) Synergy Grant.

The grant supports the use of multi-petawatt-class lasers and plasma accelerators to explore the non-perturbative quantum electrodynamics (NP-QED) regime, advancing our understanding of how matter behaves under the most intense electromagnetic fields ever produced on Earth.

The team also includes researchers from DESY (Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron) Research Centre in Germany, CEA Paris-Saclay (Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives) in France, the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, and ELI-NP (Extreme Light Infrastructure–Nuclear Physics) in Romania. The project is among the most competitive research awards in Europe, with only 66 projects selected from 701 applications (a 9.4 percent success rate).

‘A completely new regime of physics’

The project aims to test QED—the theory describing how light and matter interact—under unprecedentedly extreme conditions.

Using plasma accelerators and ultra-intense lasers, the team will attempt to expose ultra-relativistic electrons and positrons to electromagnetic fields exceeding the Schwinger limit, where it has been conjectured that the interaction between light and matter is much stronger than typically observed.

“We will need to develop a new theoretical approach to describe physics at these extremely high fields,” Di Piazza says. “At such intensities, QED is expected to behave as a strongly interacting theory—similar to quantum chromodynamics—which would open a completely new regime of physics.”

The NP-QED collaboration will combine expertise in quantum electrodynamics, plasma acceleration, and laser technology. Henri Vincenti (CEA Saclay) pioneered the relativistic plasma-mirror technique to boost laser intensity by several orders of magnitude; Andreas Maier (DESY) leads the development of compact and high-quality plasma accelerators; Jenny List (DESY) is responsible for designing new detectors suitable for measuring high-flux electron, positron, and photon signals; and Di Piazza will develop theoretical models to interpret experimental results and compare them with QED predictions.

Harnessing ultra-powerful lasers

The areas of study in this NP-QED award directly align with experiments that are central to , the proposed Optical Parametric Amplifier Line user facility at LLE, sponsored by the US National Science Foundation (NSF).

Di Piazza is one of five co-principal investigators for the along with , a professor of optics and a distinguished scientist at LLE; Franklin Dollar from the University of California, Irvine; Eva Zurek from the University at Buffalo; and Ani Aprahamian from the University of Notre Dame. The proposed facility plans to deliver at extreme intensities.

“By scaling the results of our simulations, we expect to access the fully non-perturbative regime of quantum electrodynamics at NSF OPAL,” says Di Piazza. “This synergy between European and US facilities will drive major advances in fundamental physics, lasers, and detector technology.”

“Dr. Di Piazza’s contributions to this collaboration exemplify the innovative spirit of the people at the URochester’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics,” says Zuegel, who is also project director for NSF OPAL and division director of laser materials and technologies at LLE. “His theoretical leadership will deepen our understanding of the universe while advancing next-generation laser-driven science.”

“This ERC Synergy Grant is a testament to the world-class research being conducted at the URochester,” says , director of LLE. “Dr. Di Piazza’s involvement underscores Rochester’s central role in global collaborations that push the frontiers of physics—frontiers that will be illuminated through advanced laser technologies such as the European Extreme Light Infrastructure and the future NSF OPAL capability.”

Exploring nature’s extremes

����dz������ٱ��’s is internationally recognized for its research in high-intensity laser physics, quantum optics, condensed matter, astrophysics, and particle physics. The department maintains strong partnerships with national and international laboratories, training students to lead at the forefront of discovery.

For , the Helen F. and Fred H. Gowen Professor in the department and a leading expert in theoretical astrophysics, the grant represents an opportunity to explore realms of physics that were once out of reach.

“The limits of how light and matter behave represent domains we’ve never been able to probe experimentally before,” he says. “This new grant will allow researchers from the URochester, coupled with an international team, to push the envelope and probe a new and critical scientific frontier. The new studies it allows will reveal aspects of the most extreme cosmic environments and uncover secrets hiding at the edges of known physics. It is fitting that the LLE is part of this groundbreaking research since it continues to define the cutting edge of using ultra-high-powered lasers to probe how light and matter behave together at nature’s extremes.”

, an associate professor of physics and chair of the department, agrees that the grant opens a new era of exploration that brings cosmic-scale physics into the laboratory.

“We are entering a new frontier where we can study these exotic physics in the lab,” he says. “This grant is very exciting, because it will lay the theoretical groundwork for the experiments in the next decade.”

Ģ����ý the ERC Synergy Grant

The (ERC) is Europe’s premier funding body for frontier research. ERC Synergy Grants support small teams of outstanding scientists working together across disciplines to address complex scientific problems. Each project is selected for its potential to make transformative contributions to its field.

Three scientists received the for demonstrating that quantum effects—specifically, quantum tunneling—can appear in larger, visible systems, not just tiny particles. They achieved this using superconducting circuits, which are large enough to be seen by the naked eye yet still exhibit quantum behavior. The discovery reveals that the quantum world and classical world aren’t as separate as once believed, showing that the strange rules governing atoms can also apply to macroscopic systems big enough to hold in your hand. This insight not only deepens an understanding of nature, but also lays the groundwork for quantum technology, including the development of quantum computers.

At the , researchers are exploring the same quantum phenomena highlighted by the Nobel Prize–winning work, both to study fundamental physics and to develop new quantum technologies.

“For a long time, the physics community thought quantum effects were limited to individual particles like single electrons or atoms,” says , an assistant professor in the . “The experiments that won the Nobel Prize showed us that quantum effects can appear in much larger systems, which blurs the boundary between quantum and classical physics.”

Blok’s lab creates superconducting circuits with qudits, which are quantum computing units that can exist in multiple states at once. In these circuits, electrons can “tunnel” through barriers, allowing qudits to occupy two or more states simultaneously, a key property for building quantum computers. In other words, Blok’s research uses the same fundamental physics recognized by the 2025 Nobel Prize to build larger-scale quantum systems that can perform computations impossible for classical devices.

“Quantum tunneling is at the core of everything we do,” Blok says.

What is “macroscopic quantum mechanical tunneling”?

The Nobel Committee awarded John Clarke, Michel Devoret, and John Martinis the 2025 Nobel for “the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunneling and energy quantization in an electric circuit.” To explain quantum tunneling, Blok turns to the classic metaphor of a child throwing a ball at a wall. According to the laws of classical physics, if the ball hits the wall, it bounces back. It can’t pass through unless the child throws it hard enough to go over or break the wall.

In quantum mechanics, however, particles behave not just as solid objects but also as waves of probability that can spread out. For very small particles such as electrons, this wave-like nature means that part of the wave can sometimes slip through the wall and appear on the other side of a barrier. The result is quantum tunneling, a phenomenon where particles can occasionally pass through barriers they seemingly shouldn’t be able to cross, according to classical physics.

Normally objects such as a ball are too big to behave like a quantum particle. But the research conducted by the 2025 Nobel laureates showed that this kind of quantum behavior can appear not only in tiny, subatomic particles but also in larger objects made of many particles.

“In essence, they built a big Schrodinger’s cat,’” Blok says, referencing the famous thought experiment in which a cat can be simultaneously alive and dead—a metaphor for a system that exists in multiple states at once.

A Nobel demonstration

At URochester, Blok and his team use superconducting circuits to explore fundamental quantum behavior and develop new quantum technologies, including steps toward quantum computers and ultra-secure quantum communication networks.

“We’re trying to use quantum effects to make quantum computers,” Blok says. “The physical mechanisms we use, namely superconducting circuits and tunneling, are closely related to the Nobel Prize research. It’s a way of turning quantum systems into quantum information.”

Beyond its promise for technological advances, Blok says one of the most exciting aspects of the Nobel research is that it highlights the power of curiosity-driven science; the original experiments, conducted in the 1980s, were motivated not with practical applications in mind but by a desire to understand physics and nature.

“What is amazing to me is that these scientists were driven by very simple fundamental questions, without imagining all the ways their research could be used,” Blok says. “It’s a beautiful sentiment that curiosity can lead to deep answers about nature and to unimaginable possibilities.”

In the past, chemists have used temperature, pressure, light, and other chemical ways to speed up or slow down chemical reactions.

Now, researchers at the have developed a theory that explains a different way to control chemical reactions—one that doesn’t rely on heat or light but instead on the quantum environment surrounding the molecules.

In published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, the researchers—including , the Dean and Laura Marvin Endowed Professor in Physical Chemistry in Rochester’s and graduate students Sebastian Montillo and Wenxiang Ying—argue that traditional theories used to predict how fast chemical reactions occur may not fully capture what happens under certain quantum light-matter interaction conditions. To address this, they developed a new theory showing how quantum effects—specifically, an effect called vibrational strong coupling (VSC)—can influence chemical reactions.

This phenomenon has been observed in experiments, but the new theory helps clarify how it works and could pave the way for more precise, energy-efficient chemical processes, with potential applications in manufacturing, medicine, and advanced materials.

“Our work may provide the first-ever theory that describes the experimentally observed phenomena,” Huo says. “It tells us that the quantum environment alone can influence chemistry in ways we didn’t think were possible and opens the door for new materials and technologies.”

Solving a quantum chemistry puzzle

In 2016, a group of scientists discovered something surprising: They were able to change how fast a chemical reaction occurs by putting the reacting molecules in a tiny space between two gold mirrors, only millionths of a meter apart. This created an environment—called an optical microcavity—where the quantum energy and electromagnetic fields in the space itself could couple with the natural vibrations of the molecules and slow down or speed up the chemical reactions between the molecules. The effect is called vibrational strong coupling.

Since then, VSC has baffled researchers.

For the past five years, Huo and his colleagues have been developing a theory that explains the phenomenon so that VSC can be understood, utilized, and controlled. Using computer simulations and quantum mechanics principles, they developed their new theory, which explains why the VSC effect happens or doesn’t happen, how changing the strength of the interaction changes the speed of the reaction, and what it could mean for the future of chemistry.

“This was like solving a challenging jigsaw puzzle, where all of the puzzling features of VSC finally fit neatly together,” Huo says. “This new strategy of VSC can selectively slow down or speed up a reaction, offering a paradigm shift in synthetic chemistry that could significantly impact drug development and materials synthesis.”

The Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the National Science Foundation supported this research.

Quantum computers have the potential to revolutionize computing by solving complex problems that stump even today’s fastest machines. Scientists are exploring whether quantum computers could one day help streamline global supply chains, create ultra-secure encryption to protect sensitive data against even the most powerful cyberattacks, or even develop more effective drugs by simulating their behavior at the atomic level.

But building efficient quantum computers isn’t just about developing faster chips or better hardware. It also requires a deep understanding of quantum mechanics—the strange rules that govern the tiniest building blocks of our universe such as atoms and electrons—and how to effectively move information through quantum systems.

In a paper published in , a team of physicists—including graduate student Elizabeth Champion and assistant professor from the ’s —outlined a method to address a tricky problem in quantum computing: how to efficiently move information within a multi-level system using quantum units called qudits.

“Efficiently controlling a qudit processor has been a long-standing challenge,” says Champion, the paper’s first author. “The methods we developed allow the core operations of a qudit-based quantum computer to be performed in far fewer steps, making full use of the hardware. This can potentially enable quantum computations and simulations that were not possible before.”

Inside Hilbert space—aka the quantum matrix

In the 1999 sci-fi movie The Matrix, the main character Neo sees the world not as physical objects such as streets and skyscrapers but as a stream of 1s and 0s—the raw data underlying his reality. In quantum physics, there is a similar underlying framework beneath the familiar world of particles and forces. This matrix is called Hilbert space.

In classical computers, information lives in specific places on a chip. But in quantum computers, information isn’t tied to a specific location. Instead, it lives in the more abstract world of Hilbert space, a massive mathematical landscape. Here, particles aren’t just tiny dots zipping around but also abstract waves of probability, existing in many locations and states at once. Although Hilbert space is not something you can see or locate in the physical computer chip, it’s where the computational power of quantum computing happens.

“The mathematical structure that we use to represent a state of a quantum computer and a calculation is literally a matrix,” Blok says. “The goal for a quantum computer is to efficiently move information around in that matrix.”

Beyond bits and qubits

Moving information through the abstract mathematical landscape of Hilbert space is no small feat. To do this, scientists rely on quantum building blocks called qubits—and, more powerfully, qudits.

While classical computers transport information using billions of tiny switches called bits, quantum computers typically move information through Hilbert space using qubits—quantum bits that can exist in multiple states at once. In classical systems, each bit is either a “0” (off) or a “1” (on). Qubits, however, are governed by the strange laws of quantum mechanics and can be both “0” and “1” at the same time.

But even qubits have their limits. Blok likens qubits to “building a sprawling city with too many roads, such as Los Angeles.” His research introduces a fundamentally different approach to moving information within Hilbert space using qudits, which can store more information in a single location. In other words, qudits go beyond “0s” and “1s” and might have three or more states (“0,” “1,” “2,” etc.) in which to encode information. This makes the architecture more like “a dense, high-rise city such as New York,” he says.

The new method developed by Blok and Champion employs “the largest qudit and the most efficient method to operate it,” Blok says. The method is inspired by nuclear magnetic resonance, a technique that uses magnetic fields to manipulate a quantum property of particles called “spins.”

“It’s like connecting all the floors of a high-rise building simultaneously,” Blok says. “By tapping into techniques from big-spin physics, we’ve discovered a much more efficient way to route quantum information within each qudit, potentially unlocking faster, more scalable quantum computers with far fewer operational bottlenecks.”

It wasn’t just his six-foot, four-inch height that made Joseph Eberly, the Andrew Carnegie Professor of Physics and a professor of optics at the Ģ����ý, stand out. Eberly, who died this past week at the age of 89, was a pioneering theorist in quantum optics whose ideas reshaped the field.

“Whether it was his seminal books and papers on lasers and quantum optics, his role as the founding editor in chief and architect of , his memorable moments as an instructor, or simply the camaraderie that he brought to his scientific and leadership circles, Joe left an indelible mark on all he did,” says , the director of the University’s , calling him “a giant in the optics community.”

During his prolific career, Eberly published more than 400 scientific journal articles. He also coauthored three monographs and textbooks on lasers and quantum optics and cofounded three international conferences for quantum optical physics.

Eberly’s most notable contributions to his field include the initial description of the spontaneous collapse and revival effect of coherence in the dynamics of a simple quantum model, the first description of Bessel beams, predictions of the recently observed non-spreading localized states of electrons in atoms, and the sudden death effect in quantum entanglement.

The winner of numerous awards and accolades, he served as , the international society for optics and photonics, and in 2021 was selected as an Optica , its most distinguished member category. The society’s to Eberly specifically highlights his research and leadership in advancing optics and photonics worldwide. He was also a fellow of the and chair of its Division of Laser Science.

‘Optics by accident’

Eberly’s career start in optics was serendipitous.

“I got into optics by accident,” Eberly . “I had done a theoretical PhD thesis and it didn’t have anything directly to do with optics at all.”

After he earned a doctorate in physics from Stanford University in 1962, Eberly landed a research position at the Naval Ordnance Laboratory in Maryland. Upon his arrival, the division director asked him about lasers. “It seems a little bit silly now, but I didn’t know anything really about lasers,” Eberly said. “Except that I knew that the guy who was asking the question really wanted to know how was he going to use lasers to shoot down submarines.”

Recalling that moment, Eberly before nixing the whole idea as “completely crazy,” explaining that there’s no wavelength that can work satisfactorily in conductive media like saltwater. Nevertheless, the lab proved his first “little bit of a push in the direction of optics,” which he followed up by coming to Rochester to work with Emil Wolf, whom Eberly called a “world guru in optics at that time.”

The faculty triumvirate of Wolf, Eberly, and Leonard Mandel effectively started the field of quantum optics at the URochester. “They were world leaders in that,” according Eberly’s close friend and Rochester colleague, , a professor emeritus of optics and physics and a historian of optics. Stroud is confident that, besides his scientific acumen, Eberly will be remembered for his strong mentorship.

“All who worked with him will state unequivocally that he had a huge influence on their lives, particularly the scientific part of it, and was crucial in the development of their careers,” says Stroud. “I could name 50 people who would say that, and that’s not just Americans.”

A notable example of Eberly’s influence? His by extremely strong laser pulses was used by then-graduate student Donna Strickland to satisfy a Rochester dean’s requirement in the late 1980s that a thesis could not be based on an invention, but instead its use had to answer an intellectual question, recalls Stroud.

She did just fine with Eberly’s model: Nearly three decades later, Strickland, now a professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, and her former graduate advisor, Gérard Mourou, won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics for the work they undertook at the University’s

A teaching career spanning five decades

Stroud and Eberly, who as graduate students had shared the same thesis advisor before arriving on campus, jointly taught an introductory graduate course in quantum optics over the course of the half-century that they were both on the Rochester faculty.

“We had great fun with it,” remembers Stroud. “It was a privilege to share the lectures. He listened to mine, and I listened to his.” In recognition of his teaching excellence, the University awarded Eberly the in 2000.

And Eberly never stopped. Having joined the Rochester physics and astronomy faculty in 1965, he was still teaching an undergraduate class this spring semester—PHYS 143: —when he took ill a few weeks ago.

“He gave wonderful lectures,” says Stroud. But he could also be intimidating, his long-time friend allows. “Not just to undergraduates but also to colleagues.” According to Stroud, Eberly held strong opinions and expressed them freely.

Part of his success lay in his intense competitiveness that extended beyond his academic pursuits. In his younger years, the lanky Eberly would play basketball at lunchtime once a week with a group on campus that also included a Rochester basketball coach. To Eberly this was more than a friendly game of pickup. “He was known for his elbows,” chuckles Stroud.

In an email to faculty, , a professor of physics and the chair of the , called colleague and friend Eberly a “spectacular” scientist. “The hole he is leaving behind in our world feels very big to me.”

Researchers at the Ģ����ý and recently connected their campuses with an experimental quantum communications network using two optical fibers. In a published in Optica Quantum, scientists describe the Rochester Quantum Network (RoQNET), which uses single photons to transmit information about 11 miles along fiber-optic lines at room temperature using optical wavelengths.

Quantum communications networks have the potential to massively improve the security with which information is transmitted, making messages impossible to clone or intercept without detection. Quantum communication works with quantum bits, or qubits, that can be physically created using atoms, superconductors, and even in defects in materials like diamond. However, photons—individual particles of light—are the best type of qubit for long distance quantum communications.

Photons are appealing for quantum communication in part because they could theoretically be transmitted over existing fiber-optic telecommunications lines that already crisscross the globe. In the future, many types of qubits will likely be utilized because qubit sources, like quantum dots or trapped ions, each have their own advantages for specific applications in quantum computing or different types of quantum sensing. However, photons are the most compatible with existing communications lines. The new paper is focused on making quantum communication between different types of qubits in a network a reality.

“This is an exciting step creating quantum networks that would protect communications and empower new approaches to distributed computing and imaging,” says , the Marie C. Wilson and Joseph C. Wilson Professor of Optical Physics, who led the Ģ����ý’s efforts. “While other groups have developed experimental quantum networks, RoQNET is unique in its use of integrated quantum photonic chips for quantum light generation and solid-state based quantum memory nodes.”

The teams at the URochester and RIT combined their expertise in optics, quantum information, and photonics to develop technology with photonic-integrated circuits that could facilitate the quantum network. Currently, efforts to leverage fiber-optic lines for quantum communication require bulky and expensive superconducting-nanowire-single-photon-detectors (SNSPDs), but they hope to eliminate this barrier.

“Photons move at the speed of light and their wide range of wavelengths enable communication with different types of qubits,” says , professor in the at RIT. “Our focus is on distributed quantum entanglement, and RoQNET is a test bed for doing that.”

Ultimately, the researchers want to connect RoQNET to other research facilities across New York State at Brookhaven National Lab, Stony Brook University, Air Force Research Laboratory, and New York University.

The research was supported by Air Force Research Laboratory.