I am currently working as a postdoc in the group of Mark Kasevich at Stanford University. My experiment involves using quantum nondemolition measurements of light coupled into a high-finesse optical cavity to prepare an ensemble of ultracold atoms inside the cavity in a special kind of entangled state, called a squeezed state, that can potentially be used to improve the sensitivity of atom-interferometric measurements. Here is a recent paper from our experiment:
Backaction noise produced via cavity-aided nondemolition measurement of an atomic clock state. Igor Teper, Geert Vrijsen, Jongmin Lee, and Mark A. Kasevich, Phys. Rev. A 78, 051803 (R) (2008). PDF.
I did my graduate work in the group of Vladan Vuletic at Stanford and MIT. We performed experiments on ultracold rubidium atoms magnetically trapped on an atom chip, which is basically a surface with microfabricated current-carrying wires on it. Due to their small size and precise fabrication, these wires can produce very tightly-confining and well-controlled magnetic traps at very short distances from the wires, in the range of hundreds of nanometers to hundreds of microns. Our early experiments investigated the effects of coming so close to a room-temperature surface on atoms at temperatures of several microkelvin. In later work, we incorporated a medium-finesse optical cavity onto our chip and studied how the coupling between the trapped atoms and light inside the cavity can be used to detect and resolve small atom numbers. Here are the papers from that work:
Resonator-Aided Single-Atom Detection on a Microfabricated Chip. Igor Teper, Yu-ju Lin, and Vladan Vuletic, Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 023002 (2006). PDF.
Impact of the Casimir-Polder Potential and Johnson Noise on Bose-Einstein Condensate Stability Near Surfaces. Yu-ju Lin, Igor Teper, Cheng Chin, and Vladan Vuletic, Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 050404 (2004). PDF.
Here is a recent version of my academic CV.