Main Research Projects

  1. Testing CNOT Schemes in Cr7Mn Dimers
      Exploring molecular nanomagnets (MNMs) using electron spin resonance (ESR), working up to demonstrating quantum computing gates using dimers of MNMs as pairs of spin qubits (quantum bits, the building blocks of a quantum computer)
  2. Developing and Simulating New MNM CNOT Schemes
      Possibilities include simulations of different schemes using Cr7Mn, and exploring other MNMs as candidates
  3. Designing and Testing Hybrid MNM-SC Qubit Systems

Possible Summer 2026 Student Projects

  1. Designing, building, and testing bimodal resonators tuned to dimer energies
  2. Designing, building, and testing PCB resonators for diamond (work towards advanced teaching lab project)
  3. COMSOL simulations of resonators
    • Good to have COMSOL experience, but not required
  4. Simulating DEER experiments
  5. Simulating active dimer CNOT gates
    • Requires at least 290
  6. Expanding FPGA capabilities
    • Requires experience with or at least interest in Verilog

Slightly Outdated Research Project Descriptions (from Spring 2025)

Two projects are similar and very experimental in nature, and two are more simulation-based/theoretical. They are all under the main lab project of exploring molecular nanomagnets (MNMs) using electron spin resonance (ESR), working up to demonstrating quantum computing gates using dimers of MNMs as pairs of spin qubits (quantum bits, the building blocks of a quantum computer).

The experimental projects are both centered around designing, possibly simulating, and then building and testing new electron spin resonance (ESR) resonators. My lab can currently interact with and read out individual spins, but we need to develop new resonators to be able to work with two spins simultaneously. These projects involve making CAD designs of two different kinds of resonators, possibly simulating them using COMSOL, and then actually building them (either in collaboration with our machine shop or personally using the department's computer-controlled micro-mill). Once they're built they need to be tested, first with already-understood samples but eventually with the new dimer samples. These projects have a lot of hands-on work.

One of the simulation projects is to simulate what we would expect to see once we have resonators that can interact with dimer spin samples. Even if we can talk to each spin independently, we also need to know how much the spins are interacting with each other, and while there are standard experimental techniques for figuring that out we need to know how to interpret the data that we expect to get from those experiments. This project would involve doing computer simulations to iteratively solve Schrödinger's equation to see what our experimental result would be given various internal interactions. A previous student set up the simulation for the simplest possible interaction, so it needs to be expanded to more general interactions.

The last project is purely theoretical, and focuses on how to actually perform quantum gates in an MNM dimer. A few years ago I published a paper with a scheme for doing so, but it was slow, which means the quantum state has more time to dephase and no longer be useful. I have some ideas for speeding up the process, which a previous student has done the preliminary work on but which has hit some interesting snags. There are several possible ways forward, but they involve reasonably-in-depth quantum mechanics and/or quantum information theory; this project is more suitable for students who have already taken at least 290. Both simulation projects have a lot of coding in Python, along with some amount of literature review and further study.

All the projects are interrelated, and nobody would be working on just one project to the exclusion of all others (so students working on simulation projects would still get some hands-on experience, and vice versa).

Physics at Hamilton