Atomic physicist David Weld chosen for 2026 National Brown Investigator Award

UC Santa Barbara physics professor David Weld is considered one of eight distinguished mid-career school chosen for Caltech’s 2026 National Brown Investigator Awards. An atomic physicist who research quantum dynamical phenomena utilizing ultracold quantum degenerate gases, Weld will obtain as much as $2 million over 5 years.

“I am happy and honored to have been named as a Ross Brown Investigator,” Weld mentioned. “I especially appreciate the support, from the Brown Foundation and from the campus, for truly curiosity-driven research.”

“My hope is that these awards will provide talented mid-career researchers with stable and secure funding at a moment of their career when they are poised to make a significant impact in their field, giving them time to focus and develop their line of thinking,” mentioned entrepreneur, philanthropist and Caltech alumnus Ross M. Brown, who established the Brown Institute for Basic Science at Caltech in 2023 by a $400 million reward.

With the help, Weld will be capable of conduct experiments utilizing the wavelike character of ultracold atoms to assemble tiny optical programs, together with elements like beamsplitters, mirrors and lenses. The wrinkle is that as a result of they’re sculpted from only a few hundred perfectly-controlled atoms, these optical elements will themselves be totally quantum mechanical objects, able to current in superposition states or present process entanglement. 

While ‘quantum optics’ usually refers back to the research of optical programs through which the gentle behaves quantum mechanically, on this new context one can think about the mirrors and lenses having their very own quantum levels of freedom, he defined. ”What occurs if you shine gentle on one thing which is in a superposition state such that it’s each a mirror and never a mirror? Such ‘doubly-quantum’ optics utilizing totally tunable, entangled femtogram-scale optical parts represents an interesting new path for optics,” Weld mentioned, “a venerable field whose history extends far back before Newton.”

Brown established the Investigator Awards in 2020 by the Brown Science Foundation, in help of the idea that scientific discovery is a driving power within the enchancment of the human situation. The Brown Institute for Basic Sciences at Caltech seeks to advance elementary science discoveries with the potential to seed breakthroughs that profit society. Including this yr’s cohort, there are a complete of 37 investigators conducting analysis beneath the auspices of the Brown Institute for Basic Sciences at Caltech. Brown Investigators from all cohorts are invited to an annual assembly that provides alternatives to share concepts.