Ohio State Professor of Physics Ezekiel Johnston-Halperin is a Thrust co-Lead in the recently funded Center for Molecular Quantum Transduction (CMQT), an Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) that has been selected by the US Department of Energy’s Office of Basic Energy Sciences (BES) to receive 12.4 million in funding. The center is led by Northwestern University and includes faculty from Cornell University, Princeton University, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of California at San Diego, the University of Iowa, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“Our research is focused on quantum-to-quantum transduction, the conversion of quantum signals from one form of energy to another, which is an essential element of quantum information science (QIS)” explained CMQT Director Michael Wasielewski, Professor of Chemistry at Northwestern University. “The anticipated discoveries will create foundational knowledge within the sphere of basic energy sciences, which will support the development of new approaches to QIS having a major positive impact on both the US and global economy.”

Advancing knowledge in QIS is broadly recognized as an urgent, multidisciplinary challenge. Quantum science innovation offers an opportunity to greatly improve information processing and communications on a transformative, global scale, as well as well as provide new sensors having unprecedented sensitivity and selectivity.

Johnston-Halperin is co-Leading Thrust 2: Distributed Molecular Quantum-to-Quantum Transduction. Work in this thrust focuses on coaxing molecules that carry quantum information, “molecular qubits”, to couple (transduce) through a magnetic host material developed at Ohio State. “One of the special things about this research is that it builds on three decades of work in this area at Ohio State. Art Epstein co-discovered and started working with this material back in 1991, and I was lucky enough to collaborate with Art when I first started at Ohio State in 2006. Now we are carrying this work forward into the new regime of quantum information science,” said Johnston-Halperin. “It is a special privilege and honor for me to carry on Art’s legacy, since his passing in 2019.” Prof. Epstein held a joint appointment in Physics and Chemistry and retired from Ohio State in 2011.

CMQT is one of six new centers funded through the 2020 awards, in which 10 centers received funding. In all, EFRC programs address pressing scientific challenges through multi-disciplinary research teams to advance energy technologies. The three research thrusts of CMQT each approach quantum transduction from a unique lens, all at the precise atomic scale. The methods employed to achieve transduction span hard and soft materials synthesis and characterization; interfacial science; molecular and electronic structural characterization over a broad range of length, energy, and temporal scales; time-resolved spectroscopy; electronic structure theory and computational modeling of molecular and materials properties.