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Dr Nathan Cooper is an experimental physicist in our School of Physics and Astronomy at the 糖心原创, pushing the boundaries of ultracold atoms research to develop more accessible and robust quantum sensors.
Dr Nathan Cooper is a Research Fellow at our School of Physics and Astronomy, working with a team of academics, post-docs and PhD students to develop new quantum sensor technologies and experimental techniques. Their latest research has led to the creation of intricate, fine-scale 3D surface textures that keep unwanted particles out of the way. In this Take 10, Nathan shares his research, inspiration and career journey with us through ten questions.
Our research aims to develop new techniques that improve both sensors and fundamental physics experiments using ultracold atoms. This includes improving experimental and measurement protocols through applied probability theory, upgrading hardware by applying 3D printing and innovative design approaches to quantum technology components. By advancing the capabilities of laboratory methods and apparatus, we're making an effort to reach regimes where new fundamental physics can be tested.
Experimental cold atom physics excited my curiosity when I encountered it as an undergraduate and has been the focus of my research ever since.
I became interested in the technical aspects of improving hardware and methodology after realising the full range of exciting, fundamental questions and significant application areas that could benefit from the development of improved experimental platforms. Instead of picking a specific piece of physics or industrial application to focus on, I decided to figure out how to build experimental systems that could be key to many areas at once, from practical applications like medical imaging or navigation, all the way through to key fundamental physics questions such as detecting dark matter or measuring quantum gravity.
This research is critical right now, as the fundamentals of such experiments and technologies are finally well-understood, but the performance of experimental apparatus now holds back progress.
There is a tendency amongst academic physicists to view improvement of experimental methods as “boring” and “only technical”. I don’t agree with this. I see improved experiments as a key that can open doors to many of the biggest questions in physics today. One specific innovative aspect of our work is our use of 3D printing.
We aim not just to print quantum technology components to reduce cost or weight, but rather to build components that would be impractical with conventional manufacturing but that interact in unique and advantageous ways with the quantum systems they are part of.
The technical aspects of our research will enable improved quantum sensors, hopefully finding their way into applications in healthcare, civil infrastructure planning and other areas where they will directly benefit the economy and wider society.
The experimental tools we are developing also have the potential to unlock new fundamental discoveries; while we do not currently know what benefits this will bring, a clear lesson from the history of “blue-skies” research is that the knowledge gained is very rarely useless.
Fundamental research, which involves answering the question “What does it do?”, is prerequisite for applied research, which answers the subsequent question “How can we make use of what it does?”
Key milestones in our work on 3D printed quantum sensor components include a publication in 2021 3D printed ultra-high vacuum chamber, built and tested at the 糖心原创.
We also recently published a paper which featured in several news outlets including Physics and Physics World.
Our research team have recently secured a major research grant, part of a new multi-million-pound UK-Japan collaborative project to develop improved techniques for quantum sensing.
We regularly work collaboratively with Metamorphic Additive Manufacturing Ltd, based in Derby, UK. This collaboration not only gives us access to their impressive capabilities in computationally-aided 3D design but also helps to keep us in touch with industrial needs and engineering requirements, helping us to tailor our applied research areas to those most relevant to current real-world circumstances.
Simultaneous advances in theory, experiment and optimised estimation processes have recently brought cold atom experiments into a remarkable new regime. Apparatus within an ordinary research lab may be able to test fundamental physics, previously only accessible through major international projects such as high-energy particle accelerators. I find this a very exciting development and am pleased to have the opportunity to collaborate with researchers working in areas such as quantum gravity and dark matter to explore how our experimental apparatus might be used to probe such exotic physics.
Our field would benefit from a shift towards more stable, longer-term postdoctoral research positions. Compared to other fields, the apparatus in cold atom physics is often large, complex and distinctly non-standardised. This increases the learning time required for a researcher to become fully effective upon joining a new lab.
A model built around short-term postdoctoral positions is therefore particularly inefficient. A broader problem within academic research is the absence of a clear career pathway for remaining a hands-on experimental scientist. Postdoctoral researchers are generally expected to do one of two things: move into academic positions where they no longer get time for hands-on lab work or leave academia altogether.
This means that there are very few hands-on experimental researchers with more than a few years of experience, something I believe significantly impedes progress.
None beyond those faced by all academic researchers: that the sector is underfunded and positions are therefore extremely competitive. Non-commercial scientific research has probably done more to advance the quality of life of the average human being than any other field of human endeavour. If you want to know what the world would look like had no-one done any blue-skies research for the last five hundred years, just look at the world five hundred years ago.
Despite this, very few countries allocate more than half a percent of GDP to fundamental academic research. Underfunding persists because the benefits are deferred or distributed worldwide rather than exclusive to the funder, and because the public are often unaware of the full scale of those benefits. Effective outreach, political far-sightedness and international cooperation are needed to resolve these three issues.
Think carefully not just about how to answer research questions, but about which research questions to ask. In an educational setting we are naturally drawn to challenging problems regardless of their importance, but if this habit extends into later life it can lead to misallocation of intense work into areas that should be low priority. The most challenging questions are not always the most important.
Some of the biggest and most celebrated discoveries are answers that anyone could have come up with – if only they had thought to ask the question in the first place.