The QSE Journal Part I: The Historical Goal of Atomic-Resolution Microscopy

The QSE Roadmap and Journal is undergoing a major upgrade this week (Dec. 18-25) to a new graphical interface. Some of the Roadmap entries may be temporarily truncated: they will return after they have been converted. Happy Holidays to all!

To apply for the UW ME Department's tenure-track faculty position(s) in quantum system engineering, please see this advertisement.

The ME Department encourages any and all qualified applicants, from both theoretical and experimental backgrounds, who seek to create and teach new technologies that push against the bounds that quantum mechanics imposes on the speed, accuracy, sensitivity, size, and power consumption of modern mechatronic devices.

This position provides a wonderful opportunity to participate in creating and teaching the new, exciting, strategically important, and rapidly growing engineering discipline of quantum system engineering (QSE).

Entry #2: Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Welcome to the UW QSE Group's Roadmap and Journal. Each entry first comments upon our (working) QSE Roadmap, and then describes our recent activities.

QSE Roadmap Comments

Part I: The Historical Goal of Atomic-Resolution Microscopy

(click on a panel to jump to that entry)

High-resolution PDF versions: (top level), (lower level), (entire roadmap)

Part I of the QSE Roadmap is largely inspired by Alan Beyerchin's historical review From radio to radar: interwar adaptation to technological change in Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States , which can be found in Murray and Millet's Military Innovation in the Interwar Period.

It took real imagination to sort out the possibilities of something so new [as radar]. ... The key to the timing that turns a discovery or invention into successful innovation lies in whether laymen can envision its possibilities. ... [The developers of radar] blurred the boundaries between technical and operational change, as they pressed for operational innovation that would spur technical advance. ... Technical innovation emerges not just from an additive combination of technical and operational change, but from their interaction. ... The fluidity of circumstances, the feedback processes with entrainment, and the general feel of the onset of technical change, are more akin to weather systems or biological (or historical) processes than to mechanical structures.

Guided by these observations, Part I of the QSE Roadmap first reviews microscopy roadmaps from the 1940s and 1950s, and then explains why why previous generations of scientists and engineers were so excited about this frontier.

Journal entry for Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Mostly About Radar for Molecules

The main activity of our UW QSE Group between now and December is the writing of proposals to the NIH, together with the writing of a review article on techniques for quantum model order reduction (and there will be an admixture of practical electron microscopy too).

As we prepare the figures for these documents, we'll be commenting on them in this daily journal---this intent being to provide readers with a practical overview of our technology.

Desktop-Scale Radar for Molecules

The figure below shows Dr. John Jacky, who is our QSE Group's lead software engineer, inspecting our magnetic resonance force microscope (MRFM) prototype.

Working MRFM device (with Dr. Jon Jacky)

MRFM devices are comparable in size and complexity to small spacecraft (or laserprinters), and as this journal will show, running an MRFM experiment is technically and psychologically very similar to operating a NASA space mission.

Whereas NASA spacecraft are distant in space, MRFM devices are distant in scale ... it is commonplace for us to advance the sample stage (bottom left in the figure) by distances as small as nanometer.

Persons wishing to visit our QSE Group's laboratory and observe experiments are encouraged to do so (call 206.543.1720 to learn when experiments are scheduled).

Moore's Law Improvements in MRFM-Based Quantum Spin Microscopy

As you might guess from its name, magnetic resonance force microscopy (MRFM) seeks to achieve atomic-resolution microscopy by uniting two well-known technologies: magnetic resonance imaging and atomic force microscopy.

MRFM device, Moore scaling (Moore's law) progress

As we will be discussing in this journal, MRFM has accumulated a considerable track record, to the point where the technical path to comprehensive quantum spin microscopy is quite clear:

make next-generation MRFM devices smaller
make the devices "cleaner" (less internal friction)
operate the devices at colder temperatures

The MRFM community has now advanced sufficiently far along this "small, colder, cleaner" design path that we are beginning to resolve the quantum nature of the spins in our samples; we will see that Dan Rugar's laboratory at IBM is playing a leading role in this area.

This is confronting the MRFM community with its biggest challenge to date. Up to the present time, every MRFM device has performed according to theory ... which is what makes MRFM device engineering possible.

The Challenge of Quantum System Engineering (QSE)

Now that we are beginning to see quantum behavior in our MRFM devices and samples, we must have quantum engineering methods that are powerful enough to guide our next-generation MRFM designs and experiments.

These new methods of quantum system engineering (QSE) will be the main focus of our QSE Journal for the next several months.