September 19, 2025
Congratulations to Zoe Yan, Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Physics, who has received a 2025 Young Investigator Award by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. The program supports early-career scientists and engineers showing exceptional ability and promise for conducting basic research.
Yan’s proposal, “Exploring Quantum Thermalization with Ultracold, Ultrapolar Molecules,” earned a total award of $450,000 over three years.
“Our everyday intuition tells us that things fall apart and disorder rises over time—something physicists call “thermalization,” explained Yan. Ice melts but water never spontaneously freezes. Yet in the right quantum setting, special arrangements of atoms or molecules might “stay put” forever, even in a highly energetic state that is not the most comfortable, lowest energy configuration. This violates something called the “Eigenstate Thermalization Hypothesis,” a description of how quantum mechanics and thermalization can coexist.
In her lab, Yan’s team wants to explore exotic dynamics of quantum systems using special molecules cooled to fractions of a degree above absolute zero. At these cold temperatures, molecules and atoms become a fertile playground and testbed for quantum mechanics, where they can control the position and momentum down to the single particle level.
The AFOSR YIP will enable Yan’s lab to create a system of such molecules and observe violations of the Eigenstate Thermalization Hypothesis, leading to better understanding of how thermalization happens in systems of interacting quantum particles. The award will support the training of a graduate student in state-of-the-art atomic and molecular physics experimental techniques.
“Early-career funding is so important, especially in this challenging funding environment, by enabling us to take risks and attempt ‘moonshots’ that might otherwise be the first on the chopping block for funding agencies,” said Yan.
“Chicago has been a great environment for the intersection of atomic, molecular, and optical physics and quantum information science—the disciplines I work in,” Yan said. She hopes these areas continue to grow as scientists explore and leverage ever more complicated quantum systems for science and technology.