"Getting A Picture of an Extra-Solar Planet"

I will discuss an exciting new approach to studying extra-solar planetary systems using nulling interferometry. This technique should make it possible to directly image a few of the closest extra-solar planetary systems in the near future using comparatively modest instrumentation. The challenges are in obtaining truly exquisite levels of wavefront and optical path control.

"Prospecting for the First Stars in the Universe"

Sometime in the first billion years after the Big Bang, stars began to "turn on." We have only a crude understanding of how and when this happened, since the primordial stars have not survived to the present day and so cannot be observed directly. However, we do know that their construction must have been a delicate physical process.

Using new observations with the Magellan and Keck telescopes, we are combing through intergalactic space to study the by-products of these early stars, much as a biologist might search the fossil record for evidence of extinct species. I will describe what these measurements have revealed about the history of early star formation, and the impact that these first stars and galaxies had on their surrounding environment.

"Searching for Gravitational Waves in Coincidence with Gamma-Ray Bursts"

Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) are huge explosions at cosmological distances. Though theories and models of their nature are quite diverse, evidence is growing that GRBs may be associated with certain types of supernovae. These explosions would also be a source of gravitational waves, and gravitational-wave detectors such as LIGO (Laser Interferometric Gravitational-wave Observatory) are currently searching for weak signals in coincidence with known GRBs detected by satellites. In this talk, I will motivate this kind of externally-triggered search, and introduce a multi-burst approach, in which the search is expanded to include more potential triggers from the HETE-2 satellite.

"Wiring Up an Atom: Toward an Electrical Measurement of a Single Nuclear Spin"

This talk will discuss initial steps in an experiment that lives at the interface between electronic devices and quantum measurements, in which we use a standard conductance measurement to probe one of the most "quantum" of all natural systems. By placing a single molecule between two metal electrodes, and measuring the transport of electric current through the molecule, we hope to demonstrate a direct electronic readout of the spin of a single nucleus. Electronic detection of one nuclear spin will be an exciting result by itself, with applications in fields ranging from quantum information processing to biology. But most importantly, this work may open the door to a new class of experiments that combine the complexity and sensitivity achievable in electronics circuits with the precision and breadth of quantum effects visible in molecular physics.

"Ultracold Atoms in Optical Lattices: Tunable Quantum Many-Body Systems"

Following the discovery of Bose-Einstein condensation in 1995, recent years have witnessed enormous progress in the physics of quantum degenerate atomic gases. In particular, it has become possible to create "artificial crystals" of ultracold neutral atoms using optical lattices. I will show that this allows for quantum simulations of complex solid-state systems like high-temperature superconductors, which are hopelessly beyond conventional computational means. Moreover, new quantum phases and model systems can be engineered that are not accessible in electronic solids at all. I will give an overview of these exciting developments from a condensed matter point of view.