A free public lecture titled "The Quantum Age: From Atoms and Photons to Quantum Computers" will be presented by Vladan Vuletić from MIT at the Aspen Center for Physics on Wednesday, March 26. This event is part of the Nick and Maggie DeWolf Foundation winter lecture series.

The evening will begin at 5:00 PM with tea and cookies, followed by the lecture at 5:30 PM sharp. While there is limited free parking available at the Center, attendees are encouraged to carpool or use the Downtowner or RFTA Crosstown Shuttle for convenient access.

This event is free, but RSVPs are highly recommended.

Arrays of individually trapped neutral atoms, laser cooled to temperatures only a tad above absolute zero, are arising as a new tool for many applications in the emerging world of quantum technologies. Uses of atomic arrays range from atomic clocks and quantum communication networks to quantum simulation and computing. In this talk, Dr. Vladan Vuletić will discuss the basic principles of trapping individual atoms in arrays of light beams and describe two applications: the coupling of single atoms to single photons in high-quality cavities and quantum computing using neutral atoms. In the latter systems, neutral atoms are used to encode the quantum generalized version of classical bits, so-called qubits. Quantum processing with atomic qubits becomes possible via laser control by exciting atoms to high-energy states. Large quantum systems are highly susceptible to noise processes that can, however, be mitigated by error correction. First steps towards quantum error correction have only recently been demonstrated, ushering in a new era of circuits with logical qubits that are each comprised of many atomic qubits.

Vladan Vuletić is the Lester Wolfe Professor of Physics at MIT. Professor Vladan Vuletić was born in Pec, Yugoslavia, and educated in Germany. In 1992, he earned the Physics Diploma from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, and in 1997, a Ph.D. in Physics from the same institution. He then went on to work with Professor Steven Chu at Stanford University as a Lynen Fellow of the Humboldt Foundation. In 2000, he was appointed an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics at Stanford and in June 2003 accepted an Assistant Professorship in Physics at MIT. He was promoted to Associate Professor in July 2004, and to Full Professor in July 2011. Vuletić is a Fellow of the APS (2012) and the AAAS (2024). Awards include a 2003 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, the Marko Jarić Prize of Serbia in 2013, and the Arthur Schawlow Prize of the APS in 2025. Vuletić is also co-founder of the quantum computing company Quera Inc. Professor Vuletić’s research includes precision measurements, large-scale quantum entanglement, quantum optics, quantum simulation and computing.

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