2020 PQI Annual Report

Pittsburgh Quantum Institute Annual Report 2019/2020

Pittsburgh Quantum Institute UNIFYING AND PROMOTING QUANTUM SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING IN PITTSBURGH SINCE 2012

Pittsburgh Quantum Institute The Pittsburgh Quantum Institute was established in 2012 to help unify and promote research in quantum science and engineering the Pittsburgh area.

PQI members have faculty appointments from Carnegie Mellon University, Duquesne University, and the University of Pittsburgh in physics, chemistry, philosophy, computer science, business, and engineering disciplines.

PQI Annual Report 2019/2020

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PQI Annual Report 2019/2020

IN THIS ISSUE Contact Us PQI Staff PQI Executive Committee Members New PQI Members Faculty Awards & Honors Graduate Student Research Awards PQI2020​ COVID19 Event Cancelations Year of Creativity Workshop PQI at Science2019 PQI Events PQI Resources Video Production Office Virtual Lab Tours & Display Hubs PQI Online PQI on Social Media Spotlight on Research

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Use this arrow throughout the document to return to this Table of Contents page

PQI Annual Report 2019/2020

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CONTACT US Pittsburgh Quantum Institute B4 Thaw Hall 3943 O’Hara Street Pittsburgh, PA 15260 412-624-8107 communication@pqi.org

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PQI Annual Report 2019/2020

PQI Staff

Jeremy Levy, Ph.D PQI Director

Ke Xu, Ph.D

Executive Co-Director

Jennifer Stein, Ph.D Executive Co-Director

Erin Fierro

Liaison Director

Barbara DelRaso Center Administrator

In addition to the pictured staff, PQI is supported by an outstanding team of undergraduate student workers who assist with information technology, graphic design, video production, and more.

Special thanks to Alvyn Berg, Jarrett Bremigen, Justine Fang, Bryce Ryan, Tiffany Smith, and Hugo Zhang.

About PQI

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PQI Executive Committee Members

Ted Corcovilos Assistant Professor Department of Physics Duquesne University

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PQI Annual Report 2019/2020

Andrew Daley

Professor Department of Physics University of Strathclyde

Randall Feenstra

Professor Department of Physics Carnegie Mellon University

Susan Fullerton

Assistant Professor Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering University of Pittsburgh

Peyman Givi

Distinguished Professor Department of Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science University of Pittsburgh

David Pekker

Assistant Professor Department of Physics & Astronomy University of Pittsburgh

Benjamin Hunt

Kenneth Jordan

Jeremy Levy

Assistant Professor Department of Physics Carnegie Mellon University

Richard King Mellon Professor Department of Chemistry University of Pittsburgh

Distinguished Professor Department of Physics & Astronomy University of Pittsburgh

Hrvoje Petek

Marek Skowronski

David Waldeck

Richard King Mellon Professor Department of Physics & Astronomy University of Pittsburgh

Professor Department of Materials Science & Engineering Carnegie Mellon University

Professor Department of Chemistry University of Pittsburgh

About PQI

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New PQI Members During the 2019-2020 year, PQI welcomed 10 new members, including those featured here.

The PQI membership now includes 105 faculty members and 300+ students and post-doc associates.

Olexandr Isayev

Assistant Professor Department of Chemistry Carnegie Mellon University

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PQI Annual Report 2019/2020

Daniel Mosse

Professor Department of Computer Science University of Pittsburgh

Bruce Childers

Professor Department of Information Culture and Data Stewardship University of Pittsburgh

Ryan O’Donnell

Professor Computer Science Department Carnegie Mellon University

Paul Ohodnicki

Associate Professor Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science University of Pittsburgh

David Wallace

Mellon Professorship Department of History and Philosophy of Science University of Pittsburgh

Xulong Tang

Assistant Professor Department of Computer Science University of Pittsburgh

Wei Xiong

Assistant Professor Department of Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science University of Pittsburgh

Sridhar Tayur

Professor Tepper School of Business Carnegie Mellon University

Xiayun Zhao

Assistant Professor Department of Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science University of Pittsburgh

About PQI 11

Faculty Awards & Honors

Susan Fullerton (Chemical Engineering, Pitt) was awarded a 2020 Sloan Research Fellowship.

Michael Hatridge (Physics, Pitt) was awarded a 2020 Sloan Research Fellowship and received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award.

Rongchao Jin (Chemistry, CMU) was recognized among the world’s most highly cited authors in 2019 according to the Clarivate Analytics list.

Jyoti Katoch (Physics, CMU) was awarded a Department of Energy Early Career Grant.

Sangyeop Lee (MEMS, Pitt) received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award.

Qing Li (Electrical and Computer Engineering, CMU) was the recipient of a 2019 Young Faculty Award from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Peng Liu (Chemistry, Pitt) was selected to receive a 2020 Chancellor’s Distinguished Research Award.

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PQI Annual Report 2019/2020

James McKone (Chemical Engineering, Pitt) was selected for the 2019 Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement award by the Oak Ridge Associated Universities.

Giannis Mpourmpakis (Chemical Engineering, Pitt) was selected to receive the Bodossaki Foundation’s Distinguished Young Scientists Award in Chemistry.

Chandralekha Singh (Physics, Pitt) received the 2020 Provost’s Award for Excellence in Doctoral Mentoring and was recognized with the Diversity in Curriculum Award.

Venkat Viswanatha (Mechanical Engineering, CMU) received the 2019 Young Investigator Award from the Office of Naval Research.

Di Xiao (Physics, CMU) was recognized among the world’s most highly cited authors in 2019 according to the Clarivate Analytics list.

Feng Xiong (ECE, Pitt) received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award.

Graduate Student Research Awards

Each year six graduate students who are working on quantum research receive an award that covers one semester of tuition and stipend. PQI accepts applications from University of Pittsburgh graduate students working in the labs of PQI members. The students also are required to participate in the spring poster session to be eligible to apply. Members of the PQI Executive Committee review the applications and determine the top six.

Xun Li

(Lee Lab, Pitt Mechanical Engineering and Material Science)

Zehan Li

(Liu Group, Pitt Physics)

The outstanding students who have won the FY2019/2020 PQI-GSA Award are listed below.

Xiaowei Bogetti

(Saxena Lab, Pitt Chemistry)

Aditi Nethwewala (Levy Lab, Pitt Physics)

Supriya Ghosh

(Waldeck Lab, Pitt Chemistry)

Timothy Yang

(Saidi Lab, Pitt Mechanical Engineering and Material Science)

About PQI 13

EVENT HIGHLIGHTS

PQI2020​

Unfortunately, the COVID19 crisis caused the cancelation of PQI2020, the annual signature event of the Pittsburgh Quantum Institute.

The three-day symposium scheduled for Wednesday, April 15 - Friday, April 17 would have been held in the University Club.

The schedule for PQI2020 included a public lecture, 11 plenary talks delivered by invited scientists, and 12 contributing talks

by PQI faculty.

In addition, the concluding event was to be a panel discussion entitled, “National Quantum Vision,” featuring four representatives from Department of Defense

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PQI Annual Report 2019/2020

agencies. Pitt’s Center for Military Medicine had agreed to sponsor the event and had pledged financial support.

Also, incorporated into PQI2020 was a talk and workshop which was partially supported by the Year of Creativity, an initiative of the Office of the Provost.

Phipps Conservatory was reserved for the PQI2020 banquet but was postponed until PQI2021.

The Poster Session, the Public Lecture, and the plenary talks were successfully revised for remote presention to the PQI community.

PQI2020: Remote Seminar Series

The plenary talks, contributing talks, and public lecture that were programmed for PQI2020 were adapted for a remote format beginning on June 18 and continuing each Thursday afternoon throughout the summer.

Each seminar featured a plenary talk by one of the invited guests and two contributing talks by PQI faculty members.

The Zoom sessions included a curated audience who were able to question the speakers. The seminars were live-streamed for the larger PQI audience, and the recorded sessions can be viewed on the PQI website.

(Harvard)

Heather Kulik (MIT)

Fred Chong (Chicago)

Daniel Stamper-Kurn (UC-Berkeley)

Scott Aaronson (Texas-Austin)

The invited guests included:

Amir Yacoby

The Public Lecture presented by

Shiwei Zhang (Washington)

Xiaodong Xu (William & Mary, Flatiron Inst.)

PQI Event Highlights 17

PQI2020: Remote Poster Session

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For the seventh consecutive year, PQI held the spring poster event as a unified community to promote quantum research in the Pittsburgh area to colleagues, peers, and outside visitors. Due to the COVID19 crisis, the PQI2020 poster session was held remotely with 54 students from different departments of the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University, and Duquesne University participating.

The judging procedures were adapted

to accommodate the remote session. Each participant submitted a video of their presentation along with their poster. These were evaluated and the top 15 students were selected for the final session that was held remotely using Zoom technology and also was live-streamed on the PQI website.

This final session was recorded and is now available to view on the PQI website. The judges then selected the top six students who received the PQI2020 Poster Awards.

Finalist presented at the PQI2020 Remote Poster Session via Zoom

A Zoom poster presentation

PQI Annual Report 2019/2020

PQI2020: Poster Award Winners

6 hardworking and outstanding graduate students received a PQI2020 poster award and 50 PQuBits for their outstanding poster presentations.

Shubham Awate (Fullerton Lab, Pitt)

Xun Li

(Lee Group, Pitt)

Anthony Bogetti

Brian Day

(Chong Group, Pitt)

(Wilmer Lab, Pitt)

Ryan Muzzio

Dengu Yang

(Katoch Lab, CMU)

(Levy Lab, Pitt)

PQI Event Highlights 19

COVID19 Event Cancelations The COVID19 crisis forced the cancelation of other events that PQI had planned in addition to PQI2020, including: • Quantum Day – A day-long event held in the Spring for high school students.

Typically, this is an occasion for college bound students to visit the Pitt campus to interact with PQI faculty and graduate students. Faculty presentations, a panel session, Q&A discussions, lunch, and tours of chemistry, physics, and engineering labs are normally included.

• Q-Wire Workshop – A daylong event with presentations from faculty involved in quantum wire research and a public lecture delivered

by James Clark, Director of Quantum Hardware, Intel Corporation.

Interested researchers from University of Wisconsin and Penn State University also had planned to travel at their own expense to Pittsburgh to attend this workshop.

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• Year of Creativity Workshop – Andrew Dotson is a physics graduate student from New Mexico State University. He has an extensive portfolio of amusing and informative videos published on YouTube which focus on the graduate student experience. Andrew was invited to attend PQI2020. As an invited guest, he was scheduled to talk at the PQI2020 banquet and lead a workshop on video planning and production that was was scheduled for Saturday, April 18 but was canceled due to the COVID19 pandemic. Partial funding for Andrew Dotson’s visit to Pitt was provided by the Office of the Provost, Year of Creativity Initiative.

• Scheduled seminars and colloquial – PQI was assisting with at least a half dozen scheduled seminars and colloquium that were canceled due to the pandemic. Most were rescheduled and will be presented remotely during the Fall semester.

PQI Event Highlights 21

PQI at Science2019

Science2019, the University of Pittsburgh’s annual celebration of science, was held October 16-18 in the J. W. Connolly Main Ballroom, Alumni Hall.

For the 6th consecutive year, PQI, as a unified community, participated in this event with a display booth to promote quantum research to colleagues, peers, and outside visitors.

In addition to the booth, PQI organized a poster session which was held on Friday, October 18.

42 students from different departments o the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University, and Duquesne University presented their work.

18 PQI members, including postdocs, faculty, and graduate students helped in judging the posters and giving feedback to presenters.

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Science2019 Poster Awards

6 hardworking and outstanding graduate students received a Science2019 poster award and 50 PQuBits for their outstanding poster presentations.

Thomas Allen

Amirreza Hashemi

(Fullerton Group, SSOE Chemical & Petroleum Engineering)

(Lee Group, SSOE Mechanical Engineering)

Namitha James

Arailym Kairalapova

Maria Mucci

(Petek Group, Pitt Physics & Astronomy)

Shubham Awate

(Hernandez Sanchez Group, Pitt Chemistry)

(Jordan Group, Pitt Chemistry)

Hatridge Lab, Pitt Physics & Astronomy)

PQI Event Highlights 23

Grant Proposal Workshops PQI actively seeks funding announcements related to quantum science and engineering. Once identified, we routinely send out a call to our members working in a relevant area and host in-person or remote meetings to present the opportunity and open the floor to discussion.

These types of meetings have led to the development of new projects and partnerships across CMU, Pitt, and including the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL).

PQI has successfully facilitated communication between partners and aided in the preparation of proposal materials towards the NSF Quantum Convergence Accelerator, NSF Quantum Algorithm Challenge, NSF Science and Technology Center, DOE Energy Frontier Research Center, and AFRL Quantum Information Science funding opportunities, among others.

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PQI Annual Report 2019/2020

Building Local Partnerships PQI co-organized a 2 day workshop in November with the National Energy and Technology Laboratory on the prospects of quantum information science and technology in fossil energy.

From Booth to Grant:

How PQI Facilitates Faculty Funding Efforts

Interdisciplinary collaboration is practically an explicit requirement for many funding opportunities. PQI is strategically positioned to support the development of multidisciplinary research teams in two different aspects. First, the visibility of PQI, whether through our online platform or booth presence in various events, provides an established connection between the members and academic and non-academic partners. For example, the Center for Military Medicine Research at the University of Pittsburgh formed a relationship with PQI faculty members through a casual introduction at a PQI booth session and as a result, are submitting a proposal to the Army Research Lab to examine the quantum-based mechanisms in cellular functions under the influence of electromagnetic radiation.

PQI Event Highlights 25

GSA Receptions and Coffee Hours

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PQI member are regularly invited to drop by for coffee and refreshments along with conversation during PQI coffee hours. These gatherings give members a small break and usually are scheduled prior to holidays. This year the winter holiday reception included a cookie exchange.

A special sundae bar reception was held to introduce the new executive co-director, Jennifer Stein, to the PQI membership and to present certificates to the recipients of

the 2018 Graduate Student Research Awards.

Another coffee hour allowed students the opportunity to experiment with the new juicer machine to create some tasty and healthy beverages.

In 2019, PQI also organized a pizza lunch reception to welcome new graduate students to the physics department. The students were introduced to faculty members as well as the benefits/support offered by PQI.

Graduate students and faculty create sundaes at the reception held in the PQI office.

Jeremy Levy and Ken Jordan present a GSA certificate to Shiv Upadhyay.

PQI Annual Report 2019/2020

PQI at CUWiP

The APS Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics (CUWiP) organizes threeday regional conferences for undergraduate physics majors each year. This year Carnegie Mellon University was chosen as a regional site for students from Pennsylvania, New York, and Ohio.

The goal of CUWiP is to empower undergraduate women and gender minorities in their pursuits and aspirations in the field of physics by providing them with an opportunity to connect with peers and leaders, learn strategies for success, and be inspired by experts.

PQI was represented with a booth at the Pittsburgh event held at CMU, January 17-19, 2020. PQI also participated in the planning meetings, and facilitated tours of the physics laboratories at Pitt for the undergraduate physics students.

Dr. Jennifer Stein, Executive co-Director of PQI discusses PQI with undergraduate physics women

PQI Event Highlights 27

Physics Food Truck

Food Truck for the Physics Mind: by TeachSpin On Wednesday, October 9, 2019, PQI hosted the TeachSpin’s 44-foot trailer which was outfitted with a wide variety of advanced physics experiments.

It was all powered up and ready to present, “The Food Truck for the Physics Mind.”

Students and faculty were welcomed to come aboard to get a sense of the exciting opportunities available for students and faculty in a modern advanced experimental physics course.

The truck was parked in the O’Hara Street parking lot and any interested person was freely invited to come in to sample the buffet of HANDS-ON advanced laboratory experiments, including instruments that once led to Nobel Prizes!

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Physics Lab Tour An event for high schoolers

PQI helped to organize laboratory tours for high-school students on December 17, 2019.

Seniors and juniors from Taylor-Allderdice High School, under the direction of Dr. Janet Waldeck, were organized into groups of 8-10 students. Each group toured the laboratories of PQI members in various areas of engineering, physics, and chemistry.

Graduate students in the laboratories graciously provided details about the equipment and the research being conducted.

The group pictured above were very engaged as Pinlei Lu, a fourth year graduate student in the Hatridge lab, explains qubits and quantum computing.

Above, Azarin Zarrassi demonstrates equipment used for physics experiments in the Frolov lab.

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PQI Seminar Series

Throughout the year, PQI works with various departments across the member institutions to organize and advertise colloquium and research seminars in quantum science and engineering and to facilitate meetings with members and visitors.

In addition to logistical support, PQI also provides financial support to members wishing to host a speaker. The visitors and

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hosts have access to the PQI guest office and meeting room.

PQI has implemented a livestreaming procedure that allows seminars to be simultaneously recorded and viewed in real time on the website or at a later time.

During the 2019/2020 year, PQI provided support for 52 speakers from as many research institutions across the United States and the world.

PQI Supported Speakers PQI provided full support, partial financial and logistical support, or logistical support only to the following list of speakers. Those canceled due to the COVID 19 crisis have been included because some level of support was provided.

Scott Aaronson Victor Batista Moungi Bawendi Marco Bernardi Fred Chong Martin Claassen James Clark Ashley Cook Tatjana Curcic Stefano Curtarolo Arthur Davidson Andrew Dotson Edward Flagg Joshua Folk Marcel Franz Feliciano Giustino Sean Hartnoll So Hirata Thomas Kempa Na Young Kim Itamar Kichi Alicia Kollar Bert Koopmans Heather Kulik Benjamin Lawrie Jia Li

Qiaowei Li (Yale University) Yingmei Liu (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Paul Lopata (CalTech) – Canceled Vidya Madhavan (University of Chicago) David Masiello (Flatiron Institute) Timothy McKay (Intel) – Canceled Eugene Mele (UC Berkeley) Grace Metcalfe (DARPA) Josef Michl (Duke University) Bindu Nair (Carnegie Mellon University) – Canceled Douglas Natelson Jeffrey Rinehart (New Mexico State University) Laura Ruetsche (West Virginia University) Mathias Schuerer (University of British Columbia at Vancouver) Inti Sodermann (University of British Columbia at Vancouver) Michiel Sprik (Carnegie Mellon University) Daniel Stamper-Kurn (Stanford University) – Canceled Douglas Stone (University of Illinois) Chris Van de Walle (Johns Hopkins University) (University of Waterloo) James (Jimmy) Williams (University of Colorado Boulder) Xiaodong Xu (University of Maryland & Joint Quantum Institute) Amir Yacoby (Eindhoven University of Technology) - Canceled Yizhi You (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Nicole Yunger Halpern (Oak Ridge National Lab) Xiayun Zhao (Brown University) Shiwei Zhang (University of Texas at Austin)

(Fudan University) (Oklahoma State University) (Department of Defense) (University of Illinois Urban-Champaign) (University of Washington) (University of Michigan) (University of Pennsylvania) (AFOSR) (University of Colorado Boulder) (Department of Defense) (Rice University) – Canceled (UC Berkeley) (University of Michigan) (Harvard University) (Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems & MIT) (University of Cambridge) (UC-Berkeley) (Yale University) – Canceled (UC-Santa Barbara) (University of Maryland) (University of Washington) (Harvard University) (Princeton University) (Harvard University) (University of Pittsburgh) (William and Mary University)

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PQI Resources

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The PQI office has many amenities to support their membership.

These include a Guest Office for visitors to stay and prepare for their presentations or plan for educational discussions with students. The office provides a secure location for personal items to be placed, computers and Internet access if needed and a private location for one-on-one meetings.

This office also doubles as a place for the PQI undergraduate work/study students to work.

The PQI Conference Room is available for anyone who needs space for small meetings. It is regularly used for small groups to meet and join

with other groups, via the Internet, for discussions pertaining to ongoing research projects.

Anyone visiting the PQI office also has access to the lounge area, kitchen equipment, and office machinery. In addition, the friendly and experienced PQI staff are available to provide assistance with any needs.

The Weekly Newsletter may be the most valuable resource that PQI offers, especially during the COVID19 crisis. It is emailed each Wednesday to the entire faculty and student membership as well as other interested parties who have subscribed. It directs readers to information on

Guest Office

New Video Wall in PQI Office

PQI Annual Report 2019/2020

the PQI website about seminars and events, quantum news, job openings, funding opportunities, upcoming conferences/workshops, and newly published quantum research.

The newest feature included in the weekly newsletter is tl;dr, a short video produced each week which summarizes new information.

Conference Support When requested and approved, PQI generously provides support for conference attendance. The requests for support are reviewed on an individual basis. Some conference support was scaled back or postponed this year due to the COVID19 crisis however, support was provided for the following list of workshops and conferences.

•

Telluride Summer Workshop 2020 – These workshops were changed to a remote format and the support provide

by PQI granted access to up to 400 attendees.

•

Colloidal Semiconductor Nanocrystals Gordon Research Seminar 2020 – This conference was postponed to 2021 and the PQI support was transferred to the new dates.

•

MRS Graphene and Beyond Workshop PSU – This workshop was held at Penn State University and PQI supported attendance for one of the Executive co-Directors.

•

STC2019 – This grant proposal workshop was held at Penn State University and PQI provided support for an attending faculty member.

•

MRS Annual Spring Conference - This conference changed to a remote format and PQI supported attendance for one of the Executive co-Directors.

PQI Resources 33

Video Production Office

PQI has a permanent video setup to record interviews. This resource is available to all PQI members wishing to record short interviews or profiles, especially when hosting visitors.

The conference/video room (pictured on top) continues to be improved and doubles as a fully-functional, 4 K video recording studio.

The studio equipment includes; 3 wallmounted 4K Cannon XC-15 professional video cameras; Independently dimmable ceiling light panels; 2 70-inch touch screens; an Intel NUC; wall-to-wall soundproofing; a pair of RODE sound condensers; a remote recording trigger; 2 retractable green screens, and a teleprompter.

This room is paired with the PQI video editing office (pictured on bottom). Live video is sent over optical fiber links to the video suite for editing and publishing.

The video editing office is furnished with high-quality video editing equipment including: an iMac Pro Retina 5K; MusicCast Soundbar System; Shogun Studio 4K Monitor Recorder; 24TB RAID array; SKAARHOJ MicroSmartH (programmable switch); and a 31-Band Graphic Equalizer.

Video editors follow an established workflo;, importing video for editing and moving raw and edited footage to Google Drive for archival.

Finished videos are pushed to YouTube and linked to the PQI website.

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Virtual Lab Tours Virtual tours of labs and other facilities continue to be incorporated into the PQI website.

To date, 8 virtual tours of members labs and affiliates have been filmed and posted.

These include the Nanoscale Fabrication and Characterization Facility (NFCF), the Dietrich School Machine Shop, the HatLab, the LevyLab, the DuttLab, the LAMP Lab (Laboratory for Advanced Materials at Pittsburgh), the Nanoionics and

Electronics Laboratory (Fullerton Group), and the PQI office.

These tours help to showcase equipment in different labs to prospective students, funding agencies, and other research collaborators.

Hat Lab

Machine Shop

NFCF

Touch Display Hubs

PQI has previously installed ten 70The locations of the screens include, New hub screens developed with inch screens with touch display Chevron Hall, Eberly Hall, Duquesne, an “at-a-glance” screen to display which connect different areas Allen Hall, PQI office, Benedum Hall, the newest and most interesting around the universities in view of and Carnegie Mellon. information from the PQI website. the members.

Items displayed on the hubs include: • PQI Calendar of Events • Twitter feeds • Video • Latest news • Recent publications • Featured faculty members • Featured students Allen Hall Hub

Benedum Hall Hub

PQI Resources 35

New Equipment

PQI has invested in new equipment to specifically help their members to reopening labs and to keep the lab workers safe during the COVID19 pandemic. All of these items are available for any members who wish to borrow or implement these in their labs.

A ProTeam Backpack Vacuum, this commercial vacuum cleaner has a 4-level HEPA media filtration, a large 10-quart capacity, and a telescoping wand tool kit. It provides improved air quality and can be a helpful tool as labs are restructured.

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A °C Breeze Fog generator is used for A Google tool, Google Resources, is air flow pattern visualization testing. It being developed to help to manage uses low impulse, thermally neutral space, instruments, and equipment. fog. This battery-operated handheld device allows mobility in large areas or remote locations where a direct connection to power is not practical.

The micro-sized particles provide excellent air flow visibility without premature settling or dispersion. The supplied nozzle extension tube allows precise fog delivery into small spaces.

PQuBits

The Quantum of Engagement The mission of PQI is to help unify and promote quantum science and engineering in Pittsburgh. PQI members already contribute to this mission by engaging in poster sessions and attending research talks. There are already some additional well-defined ways in which our members can be engaged, e.g., through our QUber/ QLyft program.

To expand the range of ways in which students and postdocs can be engaged with PQI, we launched a new program “UniPro Initiators�, for members to help fulfill the mission of PQI, develop their professional skills, and/or flex their creative muscles.

UniPro Initiators can complete activities that include producing video tutorials or demos, writing press releases related to the latest innovative

research, hosting and interviewing guest speakers, or taking over the social media at events. Memberproduced content is featured on our various online platforms that include our weekly newsletter, website, and Twitter account.

In addition to these suggested activities, members are encouraged to propose activities of their own that focus on topics in quantum science and engineering. This mechanism, the UniPro Initiative, has been in use for several years and more broadly allows members to make a case for PQI-supported initiatives.

As a token of our appreciation, we introduced a new rewards program, called PQuBits. The PQuBit is the quantum of engagement at PQI and can be exchanged for a

range of (allowable) benefits such as conference travel, tech goods, textbooks, and more. PQuBits are awarded to the winners of poster session contests and to members that complete UniPro activities.

To facilitate communication and encourage involvement, we also established the PQI Liaisons initiative. PQI Liaisons are a single student representative from each faculty group that offer a direct link of communication from PQI. The Liaisons serve on a semester basis and in exchange for PQubits, aid our efforts to maintain our data on the hundreds of students involved with PQI, highlight news from their groups, and keep their co-workers up to date on the latest activities and events that PQI hosts.

PQuBit-Coin

Front

Back

PQI Resources 37

www.pqi.org PQI continues to expand and update the website and intranet, which now more than ever, is the primary contact source to keep the PQI membership informed of the current status of quantum research.

The weekly newsletter, email communications, and the PQI Hubs all lead to the website for details about events, recent publications, and news.

PQI members who log in to the PQI intranet gain access to additional features including funding opportunities, conferences, videos, interviews, student support services, and more.

In addition, PQI intranet resources allow members to: • Reserve the PQI conference room for meetings or interviews; • Suggest and ask for financial support to host a speaker; • Advertise and publish articles, lectures, seminars, and conferences in the PQI weekly newsletter.

• Submit contributions for the PQI website (i.e., virtual tours, news articles, recent publications or awards).

• Propose an initiative to fulfill PQI’s mission; • Read more details hosting a visitor.

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about

PQI on Social Media

PQI continues to increase its use of social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, and especially YouTube, to help build engagement and promote quantum science to: its membership; to the greater “quantum community�; and to the general public. A well-established history with these platforms allowed PQI to easily transition to remote working and learning environments needed during the COVID19 crisis.

PQI Resources 39

Spotlight on Research

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PQI Annual Report 2019/2020

Batteries for Future Cars: Universal chemomechanical design rules for solid-ion conductors to prevent dendrite formation in lithium metal batteries Venkat Viswanathan Department of Mechanical Engineering Carnegie Mellon University

Venkat Viswanathan and his team published their results in understanding electrodeposition instabilities at solidsolid interfaces, which can lead to high-performing lithium metal-based batteries. Their study was published in Nature Materials, and collaborators of the study include researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). The goal was to develop advanced separators that would lead to lithium electrode subassemblies that could be seamlessly integrated with current and next-generation cathodes. In particular, they were developing polymer-ceramic composites with

unique ion transport properties along with dendrite-suppressing capability.

After a few iterations, they settled on LiF being the inorganic phase. Using a variety of computational techniques, they explored the energetics of ion motion pathways at the interface between LiF and polymers with intrinsic microporosity (PIM). They found interfacial ion transport to be much more favorable than in the bulk components of the composite, showing that the composite’s ionic conductivity was high enough for its use as a separator. Their collaborator at LBNL showed experimental validation of their predicted values for the energetic barrier for ion motion, leading to the conclusion that the ionic motion path was through the

interface. Based on this conclusion, they were able to calculate the average molar volume of the mobile lithium ion in the composite separator and compare it to the corresponding bulk lithium value. Finally, they had confirmed that the LiF@PIM composite falls in the density-driven stability regime and does indeed suppress dendrite growth.

PQI Spotlight on Research 41

Dressing metal:

Coherent multidimensional photoelectron spectroscopy of ultrafast quasiparticle dressing by light Hrvoje Petek Department of Physics and Astronomy University of Pittsburgh

Research describing how an optical field can modify the electronic properties of a solid was published in Nature Communications, lead

by Hrvoje Petek and co-authored

by Dr. Marcel Reutzel, Andi Li, and Zehua Wang.

Applying intense ultrafast light pulses, which provide a time-periodic electronic potential acting together with the lattice ions, defines the forces experienced by electrons in solids, such as metals and semiconductors, Petek and his coworkers demonstrated that an optical field can transiently, on the 10-14 second time scale, modify (dress) the electronic bands in a metal,

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potentially changing them from an electron to a hole condition.

This is important because electron and hole quasiparticles move in the opposite direction in response to an applied electrical field. They demonstrate that light can be used to modify electronic band structures of solids as fast as the attosecond (less than 10-15 second) time scale of oscillation of the optical field of visible light. This could be used for applications ranging from quantum computing to switching of electrical currents a thousand times faster than in any electronic devices in use today.

A special kind of superconducting material for robust quantum computers Benjamin Hunt & Randall Feenstra Department of Physics Carnegie Mellon University Feenstra

Hunt

Research led by Ben Hunt and Randall Feenstra details the creation of a special kind of superconducting material that could allow for the creation of new and more robust quantum computers.

“The main result is that we created a new state of matter,” said Ben Hunt.

This state of matter, a one-dimensional topological superconductor, has been made before, but their new study published in the journal Nature Physics proved its first creation in a particular material — tungsten telluride. Coauthors of the paper include Dacen Waters and Felix Lüpke.

On its own, tungsten telluride is a fascinating material. When electricity is conducted through a sheet of it, instead of flowing evenly through

the material, the electricity instead only flows around the substance’s edges. This unique edge conduction, described as one-dimensional, makes tungsten telluride a topological insulator.

“We knew that this state existed and what we did in this paper is that we took this really interesting edge state and made it go s u p e r c o n d u c t i n g ,” Hunt explained.

The researchers did that by sticking the tungsten telluride onto the superconductor niobium diselenide.

Using scanning

tunneling microscopy, the team was able to confirm that by being in proximity to a superconductor, the tungsten telluride gained superconducting properties while still retaining its unique properties.

PQI Spotlight on Research 43

Tunable Layer Circular Photogalvanic Effect in Twisted Bilayers Di Xiao

Department of Physics Carnegie Mellon University

Di Xiao and his postdoc Yang Gao show how two-dimensional materials can be precisely tuned to act as sensitive detectors for a difficult-tomeasure form of light.

“Material design sounds like a very complicated topic,” said Di Xiao.

“But deep down it’s just about how you arrange atoms.” In a new study published in the journal Physical Review Letters, they show how arranging two layers of graphene atoms can allow the detection of circularly polarized light.

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Compared to the more familiar linearly polarized light, in which the waves of radiation move along a plane in a single direction, circularly polarized light occurs when the waves constantly rotate while moving along a plane in space. When polarized this way, light waves rotate left or right, leading to “left-handed light” and “right-handed light.”

In the study, Gao took two layers of graphene atoms and changed their arrangement by “twisting” them — essentially rotating the layers in relation to each other. The resulting structure is chiral, meaning it is different from its mirror image. They showed that circularly polarized light can induce an electric dipole across the two layers of graphene. Opposite circular

polarization of light leads to dipoles in the opposite direction. As the angle of twist changed, the resonance peak of the signal changed in a consistent manner from visible to infrared light, thus creating a material that’s “tunable” to certain frequencies of light.

A new phase of matter:

Pascal conductance series in ballistic onedimensional LaAIO3/SrTiO3 channels Jeremy Levy Department of Physics and Astronomy University of Pittsburgh “Normally, electrons in semiconductors or metals move and scatter, and eventually drift in one direction if you apply a voltage. But in ballistic conductors the electrons move more like cars on a highway.

The advantage of that is they don’t A research team led by Jeremy give off heat and may be used in ways Levy announced the discovery of that are quite different from ordinary a new electronic state of matter. electronics. Researchers before us Patrick Irvin, David Pekker, and Roger have succeeded in creating this kind Mong are co-authors of the paper of ballistic conductor,” explained Levy.

“Pascal conductance series in ballistic “The discovery we made shows one-dimensional LaAIO3/SrTiO3 that when electrons can be made to channels.” The research focuses on attract one another, they can form measurements in one-dimensional bunches of two, three, four and five conducting systems where electrons electrons that literally behave like are found to travel without scattering new types of particles, new forms of in groups of two or more at a time, electronic matter.” rather than individually. The study was Levy compared the finding to the published in Science on Feb. 14. way in which quarks bind together

to form neutrons and protons. An important clue to uncovering the new matter was recognizing that these ballistic conductors matched a sequence within Pascal’s Triangle.

PQI Spotlight on Research 45

Plasmonic nanogap enhanced phase change devices with dual electrical-optical functionality Nathan Youngblood Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering University of Pittsburgh

Nathan Youngblood and his colleagues at universities of Oxford, Münster and Exeter developed the first ever integrated nanoscale device that can be programmed with either photons or electrons, which bridges the fields of optical and electronic computing. This provides an elegant solution to achieving faster and more energy efficient memories and processors.

They came up with a solution to confine light into nanoscopic dimensions, as detailed in their paper “Plasmonic nanogap enhanced phase change devices with dual electricaloptical functionality” published in

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Science Advances in November 2019.

They created a design which allowed them to compress light into a nanosized volume through what is known as a surface plasmon polariton. The dramatic size reduction in conjunction with the significantly increased energy density is what has allowed them to bridge the apparent incompatibility of photons and electrons for data storage and computation. More specifically, it was shown that by sending either electrical or optical signals, the state of a photo- and electro-sensitive material was transformed between two different states of molecular order. Further, the state of this phase-

transforming material was read out by either light or electronics thereby making the device the first electrooptical nanoscale memory cell with non-volatile characteristics.

“This naturally includes artificial intelligence applications where in many occasions the needs for highperformance, low-power computing far exceeds our current capabilities.

It is believed that interfacing lightbased photonic computing with its electrical counterpart is the key to the next chapter in CMOS technologies,” states Nathan.

Molecularly Thin Electrolyte for All Solid-State Nonvolatile TwoDimensional Crystal Memory Susan Fullerton Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering University of Pittsburgh

Floating-gate flash memory is the most popular nonvolatile memory (NVM), which uses a one-transistor (1T) cell structure where a field-effect transistor (FET) serves both as the cell selector and the storage node.

The 1T architecture exhibits better scalability and simpler integration than the one-transistor, one-capacitor (1T1C) structure used in, for example, dynamic random access memory (DRAM). A molecularly thin electrolyte is developed by Susan Fullerton and her team to demonstrate a nonvolatile, solid-state, 1T memory based on an electric-double-layer (EDL) gated WSe2 FET. Their study, co-

first authored by PhD candidate Jierui Liang and Research Assistant Professor Ke Xu, were published in Nano Letters on Oct 29, 2019.

The custom-designed monolayer electrolyte consists of cobalt crown ether phthalocyanine and lithium ions, which are positioned by fieldeffect at either the surface of the WSe2 channel or an h-BN capping layer to achieve “1” or “0”, respectively.

Bistability in the monolayer electrolyte memory is significantly improved by the h-BN cap with density functional theory (DFT) calculations showing enhanced trapping of Li+ near h-BN due to the increase in adsorption

energy. Non-destructive reading at a back gate voltage of 0 V was achieved with an On/Off ratio exceeding 104.

The monolayer electrolyte-gated FET can respond on time scales similar to existing flash memory. Their data also suggest that faster switching times and lower switching voltages could be feasible by top gating, and that the energy barrier to switching can be chemically tuned, which offers the potential to adjust the switching and retention time and introduce multiple states.

PQI Spotlight on Research 47

First Universal Computer Model for Metal Nanoparticle Adsorption Giannis (Yanni) Mpourmpakis Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering University of Pittsburgh Metal nanoparticles have a wide range of applications, from medicine to catalysis, from energy to the environment. But the fundamentals of adsorption - the process allowing molecules to bind as a layer to a solid surface - in relation to the nanoparticle’s characteristics were yet to be discovered.

Research from Giannis (Yanni) Mpourmpakis and his team introduces the first universal adsorption model that accounts for detailed nanoparticle structural characteristics, metal composition and different adsorbates, making it possible to not only predict adsorption behavior on any metal nanoparticles but screen their stability, as well. Their study was published in Science Advances in September, 2019.

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The research combines computational chemistry modeling with machine learning to fit a large number of data and accurately predict adsorption trends on nanoparticles that have not previously been seen.

By connecting adsorption with the stability of nanoparticles; nanoparticles can now be optimized in terms of their synthetic accessibility and application property behavior. This improvement will significantly accelerate nanomaterials design and avoid trial and error experimentation in the lab.

“This model has the potential to impact diverse areas of nanotechnology with applications in catalysis, sensors, separations and even drug delivery,” says Yanni. “Our lab, as well as other groups, have performed prior computational studies that

describe adsorption on metals, but this is the first universal model that accounts for nanoparticle size, shape, metal composition and type of adsorbate. It’s also the first model that directly connects an application property, such as adsorption and catalysis, with the stability of the nanoparticles.”

Mimicking nature with the aid of machine learning Paul Ohodnicki & Paul Leu Department of Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science Department of Industrial Engineering University of Pittsburgh Ohodnicki

Computational modeling and experimental research are used in a synergistic manner to develop and understand advanced materials in Paul Leu’s lab. In collaboration with Paul Ohodnicki, they created a nanostructure glass that takes inspiration from the wings of the glasswing butterfly to create a new type of glass that is not only very clear across a wide variety of wavelengths and angles, but is also antifogging.

Glass for technologies like displays, tablets, laptops, smartphones, and solar cells need to pass light through, but could benefit from a surface that repels water, dirt, oil, and other liquids.

The team published a paper detailing their findings: “Creating Glasswing Butterfly Inspired

Leu

Durable Antifogging Omniphobic Supertransmissive, Superclear Nanostructured Glass Through Bayesian Learning and Optimization� in Materials Horizons.

The nanostructured glass has random nanostructures, like the glasswing butterfly wing, that are smaller than the wavelengths of visible light. This allows the glass to have a very high transparency of 99.5% when the random nanostructures are on both sides of the glass. This high transparency can reduce the brightness and power demands on displays that could, for example, extend battery life. The glass is anti-reflective across higher angles, improving viewing angles. The glass also has low haze, less than 0.1%, which

results in very clear images and text.

Researchers have long sought inspiration from nature to replicate these properties in a synthetic material, and even to improve upon them. While the team could not rely on evolution to achieve these results, they instead utilized machine learning.

PQI Spotlight on Research 49