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.

Our paper 'Continuous-wave room-temperature diamond maser' was published in Nature and also made the cover.

On the cover this week: The maser goes mainstream. Diamond defects drive continuous emission for room-temperature microwave lasers: https://t.co/VjFeBeYWj9 pic.twitter.com/47zWEnsVEF

— nature (@nature) March 22, 2018

In the local news ...

Quantum computing breakthrough: Imperial scientist (me) reveals latest findings
(article by Colin Smith)

My new paper in npj Quantum Information on cavity quantum electrodynamics using masers is available free (open access) here:

Room-temperature cavity quantum electrodynamics with strongly coupled Dicke states

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 \(10^{\sf 15}\) 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.

Quantum Engineering: ambient solid-state quantum optics https://t.co/F8ldSjr43T pic.twitter.com/BgZLam0yeb

— Nature Partner Jnls (@Nature_NPJ) October 5, 2017

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!

Find out more here.

Image credit: European Space Agency & NASA

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.