The Quantum Information and Optics Lab, affectionately known as the Q Lab, is a part of Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Northern Virginia. Each year, the lab welcomes a handful of seniors conducting their capstone research project. Equipped with state-of-the-art microscopes, optical equipment and sensors, the Q Lab enables these young physicists to conduct research in a college-like environment.
Recently Updated Projects
Shrinking Quantum Key Distribution onto a Chip
Quantum key distribution (QKD) allows two parties to establish a shared secret key while detecting whether an eavesdropper has intercepted the communication. In the BB84 protocol, information is encoded using four quantum states divided between two measurement bases. Because measuring a quantum state can disturb it, an eavesdropper attempting to in... read more
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Optimization of an NV-Diamond CW-ODMR Magnetometer for Sentinel Lymph Node Detection
NV diamonds has shown great promise in the field of sensing and navigation due to their high sensitivity to small changes in magnetic fields. Its incorporation into magnetometers is favorable due to its functionality at room temperature and ability to be made into a small size. One crystal structure consists of a vacancy and the replacement of a ca... read more
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A Tense Dinner: Quantizing the Prisoner's Dilemma and its Variants
Game theory is a field of applied mathematics that models interactions between independent agents, called players, in games of strategy. Game theory analyzes each player’s choices and its impact on both the overall game and every other player’s choices [1]. One of the most studied games in game theory is the Prisoner’s Dilemma [1]. In the classi... read more
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The Design and Construction of a Rubidium Magneto-Optical Trap
A magneto-optical trap (MOT) cools atoms to microkelvin range temperatures by trapping atoms within perpendicular laser beams and varying magnetic fields [1]. A MOT uses opposing photon emission and absorption to reduce an atom’s speed, consequently reducing its temperature. By combining this with a magnetic field, the MOT works to trap an atom ... read more
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Rb Optically Pumped Magnetometry
Deception can produce involuntary and measurable changes in cardiovascular response. For example, significant differences in heart rate have been found when comparing truthful and deceptive responses (Godert et al. 2001). Atomic magnetometers can achieve subfemtotesla sensitivity to magnetic fields without the cryogenic cooling required by supercon... read more
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Uncertainty-Aware Neural Decoding for Surface-Code Quantum Error Correction
1 Introduction:
Quantum computers must detect and correct physical errors without directly measuring the encoded quantum state. Surface codes address this problem by repeatedly measuring local stabilizers on a two-dimensional qubit lattice. Changes in those measurements, called detection events, reveal where an error may have occurred, but th... read more
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Quantum-Optimized Reconstruction of Ketone Dynamics from Fabry-Pérot Optical Breath Measurements
Introduction: Diabetes management depends on measurements that are often invasive, intermittent, or expensive. Acetone in exhaled breath is linked to ketone metabolism and can be measured optically, but a breath spectrum is not itself a metabolic state: the clinically meaningful quantities—blood β-hydroxybutyrate (BHB), acetoacetate, acetone, and t... read more