Jared Males

I will review our recent work to characterize the fundamental limits imposed by atmospheric turbulence on exoplanet detection from the ground, including the impact of the speckle correlation lifetime. The underlying theory can also be applied to space-based instruments. The results have implications for AO control, coronagraph design, post-coronagraph wave front control, and post-processing algorithm development. I will then present the status of our new extreme-AO system, MagAO-X, and discuss how our team at UArizona is using MagAO-X to push towards achieving the fundamental limits.

Joseph Howard

Astronomy is arguably in a golden age, where current and future NASA space telescopes are expected to contribute to this rapid growth in understanding of our universe. A summary of our current space assets will be given, as well as an update on the status of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), almost ready for launch. Future telescopes will also be discussed, including the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (RST), the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), as well as mission concept studies being prioritized in the 2020 Decadal Survey in Astrophysics.

Dr. Kang-Kuen Ni

Optical tweezers, made from tightly focused laser beams are versatile tools to manipulate small particles for studies in physics, chemistry, and biology. In this talk I will focus on an application where we use tweezers to grab single atoms from a laser-cooled ensemble and assemble pairs of single atoms into molecules with full quantum state control. This work goes beyond the usual paradigm of chemical reactions that proceed via stochastic encounters between reactants, to a single, controlled reaction of exactly two atoms. We aim to use these single molecules as building blocks for quantum simulators and computers.