My colleague Juna and myself had a great time filming with the Nature Video guys Elizabeth Gibney, Noah Baker and Lizzy Brown. My kids loved 'Disco Einstein' at the end of the video.
In this work, we managed to achieve strong-coupling at room-temperature with a photo-excited spin-ensemble. Similar studies have been presented previously with ensembles of paramagnetic ions, but this is the first time an almost pure collective quantum state had been initialised. Of the 1015 pentacene molecules, over 90% were prepared in the excited state.
This was a fun paper. Realising we were operating in the strong-coupling regime of cavity quantum electrodynamics, for me, was a milestone.
On the evening of August 30th (18:45–22:00), we will be presenting our 'Amazing Masers' exhibit at the space themed Science Museum 'Lates' event, where the Royal Society, BBC, Wellcome Trust and the Open University team up with the Science Museum to bring you the best in UK space research. Strictly over 18s only!
We (a joint venture between Imperial College London and University College London) recently exhibited at the Royal Society Summer Exhibition 2017.
Our exhibit 'Amazing Masers' exhibit showcased our room-temperature maser, the first time it has been outside a lab. We also encouraged visitors to build pentacene, p-terphenyl and other molecules and test drive a robotic mars rover on a CNC machined model of the surface of Mars via a video feed.
Here's our video that explains what masers are, what they do and what they could do:
Thanks to our volunteers we had a very successful week with only a few minor technical hitches. We hope that our visitors enjoyed the exhibit and learnt about masers and their new exciting future.