New Horizons in Physics Prize
This year’s New Horizons in Physics Prizes honor early-career researchers across a wide range of fields. In quantum information, a field at the fertile intersection of physics, mathematics and computer science, Jeongwan Haah has developed models of emergent quantum systems –macroscopic systems exhibiting quantum behavior, whose potential applications include quantum computing; these models include ‘Haah's code’, which has opened the field of a class of quasi-particles called fractons. In atomic physics, Waseem Bakr has created quantum gas microscopes that can image individual atoms confined in an optical lattice, advancing the study of strongly interacting quantum systems. And in astronomy, Sebastiaan Haffert, Rebecca Jensen-Clem and Maaike van Kooten have designed and enabled novel techniques for extreme adaptive optics, which are systems that compensate for the effects of Earth’s atmosphere on light reaching terrestrial telescopes. Their work promises to enable the direct detection of the smallest exoplanets.
Excerpted from Breakthrough Prize
