Jonas Nils Becker

Ast Prof, J Cowen Chair, Department of Physics & Astronomy

Location: 4226 Biomed Phys Sci

Photo of: Jonas Nils Becker

Bio

Before joining Michigan State University in December 2021, he was a Postdoctoral Research Assistant in the Ultrafast Quantum Optics & Metrology group at the University of Oxford (2017-2020), working on optical quantum memory technologies in atomic vapors and solid-state systems as well as on studies of quantum thermodynamics using diamond defects as a novel experimental testbed. There, he was part of the team that built the first quantum heat engine purely relying on thermal baths to beat the power bound of its classical counterpart, using nitrogen vacancy defects in diamond as the engine and quantum coherence within the engine as the non-classical resource. With the group’s move in 2020 he then joined Imperial College London as a Research Associate in Quantum Information where he was working on broadband atomic frequency comb quantum memories with rare earth-doped crystals as well as further experiments with atomic vapor-based quantum memories.
Becker received an M.Sc. in Chemistry in 2013 and a Ph.D. (Dr. rer. nat.) in Physics in 2017, both from Saarland University, Germany. There, he worked in the Quantum Optics Group for his graduate research, performing spectroscopic investigations and quantum control experiments of crystal defects in synthetic diamond. His research substantially contributed to making the silicon vacancy center, now a frontrunner for a quantum networking platform, accessible for quantum information processing applications.
# Education:
* 2020 – Research Associate in Quantum Information, Imperial College London, UK
* 2017 – Postdoctoral Research Associate, University of Oxford, UK
* 2017 – Ph.D in Physics, Saarland University, Germany
* 2013 – M.Sc. in Chemistry, Saarland University, Germany

Selected Publications

All-optical control of the silicon-vacancy spin in diamond at millikelvin temperatures, J.N. Becker, B. Pingault, D. Groß, M. Gündogan, N. Kukharchyk, M. Atatüre, P. Bushev, and C. Becher, Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 053603 (2018) View Publication
All-Optical Formation of Coherent Dark States of Silicon-Vacancy Spins in Diamond, B. Pingault, J.N. Becker, C.H.H. Schulte, C. Arend, C. Hepp, T. Godde, A.I. Tartakovskii, M. Markham, C. Becher, and M. Atatüre, Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 263601 (2014) View Publication
Coherent control and wave mixing in an ensemble of silicon vacancy centers in diamond, C. Weinzetl, J. Görlitz, J.N. Becker, I.A. Walmsley, E. Poem, J. Nunn, and C. Becher, Phys. Rev. Lett. 122, 063601 (2019) View Publication
Experimental Demonstration of Quantum Effects in the Operation of Microscopic Heat Engines, J. Klatzow, J.N. Becker, P.M. Ledingham, C. Weinzetl, K.T. Kaczmarek, D.J. Saunders, J. Nunn, I.A. Walmsley, R. Uzdin, E. Poem, Phys. Rev. Lett. 122, 110601 (2019). View Publication
Gigahertz-bandwidth optical memory in Pr3+:Y2SiO5, M. Nicolle, J. N. Becker, C. Weinzetl, I. A. Walmsley, and P. M. Ledingham, Opt. Lett. 46(12), 2948-2951 (2021). View Publication
Ultrafast all-optical coherent control of single silicon vacancy colour centres in diamond, J.N. Becker, J. Görlitz, C. Arend, M. Markham, and C. Becher, Nat. Commun. 7, 13512 (2016) View Publication