Miles P. Blencowe

Academic Appointments

Eleanor and A. Kelvin Smith Distinguished Professor in Physics

My work as a theoretical physicist centres on addressing the fundamental question concerning how our macroscopic, classical world of everyday experience emerges from the microscopic, counterintuitive quantum world. Relevant investigations range from collaborating with experimentalists (Alex Rimberg, Dartmouth; Keith Schwab, Caltech) and theorists (Andrew Armour, Nottingham) on mesoscale electro(opto)mechanical systems that straddle the micro-macro worlds ... to constructing fundamental theories on the possible role of gravity as an enforcer of classicality in the macroscopic domain.

Research progress would not have been possible without the close collaboration with several graduate students: Qidong Xu, Hui Wang, Erind Brahimi, Latchezar Benatov, Laura Remus (Patent Agent at Venable LLP), Paul Nation (Research Staff Member, Theory of Quantum Computing and Information Group, IBM), Yong Zhang (Assoc. Prof. Southwest U., China).

I have also had the pleasure to work with several undergraduate students on research: Zehua (Astoria) Song, Laxman Bist, Cassidy Nicks, Kimberly Tan, Viola Gatti Roaf, Eashwar Sivarajan (grad student at Boston University), Saba Nejad (master's student at MIT), Oscar Friedman (music producer), Ben Katz (grad student at Penn State), Emily DeBaun (grad student at Tufts), Laura DeLorenzo (grad student at Caltech), Brendan Huang (MD-PhD student at Yale), Wendell Smith (grad student at Yale), Ben Chapman (grad student at U.C. Boulder), Evan Brand (grad student at UNH), Spencer Smith (grad student at Tufts; Assistant Prof. at Mount Holyoke College), Louisa Gilder (writer, author of "The Age of Entanglement").

I have taught a number of courses at the undergraduate and graduate level: Biophysics, Solid State Physics, Statistical Physics, Mechanics, Quantum Mechanics (beginning, intermediate, and advanced), Quantum Field Theory, Particle Physics.

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Contact

Miles.P.Blencowe@Dartmouth.EDU

6-2969

Shattuck Observatory

HB 6127

Education

B.Sc. (1st Class Hons.), ARCS, Imperial College, London (1986)
Ph.D., DIC, Imperial College, London (1989)
Postdoctoral Positions: DAMTP, University of Cambridge (1989-91); Enrico Fermi Institute, University of Chicago (1991-3); University of British Columbia (1993-4); Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College (1994-9)

Selected Publications

Hui Wang and Miles Blencowe, Coherently amplifying photon production from vacuum with a dense cloud of accelerating photodetectors, Communications Physics 4, 128 (2021), DOI: 10.1038/s42005-021-00622-3
M. P. Blencowe and H. Wang, Analogue gravity on a superconducting chip, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 378, 20190224 (2020), DOI: 10.1098/rsta.2019.0224
William F. Braasch, Jr., Oscar D. Friedman, Alexander J. Rimberg, and Miles P. Blencowe, Wigner current for open quantum systems, Physical Review A 100, 012124 (2019). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.100.012124
Hui Wang, M. P. Blencowe, C. M. Wilson, and A. J. Rimberg, Mechanically generating entangled photons from the vacuum: A microwave circuit-acousticresonator analog of the oscillatory Unruh effect, Physical Review A 99, 053833 (2019). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.99.053833

Hui Wang, M. P. Blencowe, A. D. Armour, and A. J. Rimberg, Quantum dynamics of a Josephson junction driven cavity mode system in the presence of voltage bias noise, Physical Review B 96, 104503 (2017). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.96.104503
M. P. Blencowe, Quantum Physics: Photons paired with phonons, Nature (News & Views) 530, 284 (2016). DOI: 10.1038/530284a
B. N. Katz, M. P. Blencowe, and K. C. Schwab, Mesoscopic mechanical resonators as quantum non-inertial reference frames, Physical Review A 92, 042104 (2015). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.92.042104
Fei Chen, Juliang Li, A. D. Armour, E. Brahimi, Joel Stettenheim, A. J. Sirois, R. W. Simmonds,
M. P. Blencowe, and A. J. Rimberg, Realization of a single-Cooper-pair Josephson laser, Physical Review B 90, 020506(R) (2014). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.90.020506
M. P. Blencowe, Effective field theory approach to gravitational induced decoherence, Physical Review Letters 111, 021302 (2013). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.111.021302
P. D. Nation, J. R. Johansson, M. P. Blencowe, and F. Nori, Colloquium: Stimulating uncertainty: Amplifying the vacuum with superconducting circuits, Reviews of Modern Physics 84, 1 (2012). DOI: 10.1103/RevModPhys.84.1
J. Stettenheim, M. Thalakulam, F. Pan, M. Bal, Z. Q. Ji, W. W. Xue, L. Pfeiffer, K. W. West, M. P. Blencowe, and A. J. Rimberg, A macroscopic mechanical resonator driven by mesoscopic electrical back-action, Nature 466, 86 (2010). DOI: 10.1038/nature09123

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Works In Progress

Book project (Oxford University Press): Mechanical Systems in the Quantum Regime.
Gravitationally induced decoherence and entanglement.
Analogue relativistic quantum field and spacetime effects in superconducting circuits.
Quantum dynamics of strongly nonlinear, low noise superconducting circuits.
Quantum versus classical dynamics of ultrastrong coupling opto(electro)mechanical systems.
Quantum music

Selected Research News Links

Conjuring a Neutron Star from a Nanowire

Synopsis: A Cooper-pair laser

Physicists eye quantum-gravity interface

Focus: Gravity makes the universe classical

Synopsis: An event on the horizon

Discovery: Measuring the intersection of two worlds

Research Images

Scheme to realize accelerating photon production from vacuum [from H. Wang and M. Blencowe, Comms. Phys., 4, 128 (2021)].
A quantum soundscape [V. Gatti Roaf, C. Y. Blencowe, and M. P. Blencowe (2020)].
Snapshot of evolving Duffing oscillator Wigner function and associated environmental diffusion current vector field [from W. F. Braasch et al. Phys. Rev. A 100, 012124 (2019)].
Circuit-acoustic resonator scheme that provides a close, realisable analogue of the oscillatory Unruh effect [from H. Wang et al. Phys. Rev. A 99, 053833 (2019)].
A superfluid interferometer scheme for investigating non-inertial reference frame induced quantum phase shifts [from B. N. Katz et al. Phys. Rev. A 92, 042104 (2015)].
A cavity-Cooper pair transistor scheme for investigating quantum optomechanics in the ultrastrong coupling regime [from A. J. Rimberg et al. New J. Phys. 16, 055008 (2014)].
Schemes for superconducting circuit implementations of vacuum amplification processes [from P. D. Nation et al., Rev. Mod. Phys. 84, 1 (2012)].

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Miles P. Blencowe