
William Edward McElfresh Professor of Physics Emeritus, currently at the National Science Foundation as a program director in the Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Experimental Physics program.
Areas of Expertise
My research has always involved lasers and atoms. For many years I used lasers as a tool to study simple atoms and molecules, including using light to actively manipulate atoms. In particular I used lasers to cool atoms to ultra-low temperatures and then stick them together to form molecules, a process known as “photoassociation.” Much of what my colleagues and I learned about atoms and molecules this way is summarized in a 2006 Reviews of Modern Physics article (see publication list).
More recently I have used atoms as a tool for manipulating light. The non-linear interaction between light and matter allows the production of a whole range of quantum states of light that are not accessible by classical optics techniques. Among other things, we have explored various kinds of optical amplifiers that work near the fundamental limits set by quantum mechanics.
Scholarship/Creative Work
Journal Articles
N.W. Carlson, A.J. Taylor, K.M. Jones, and A.L. Schawlow, “Two-Step Polarization Labeling Spectroscopy of Excited States of Na2,” Phys. Rev. A 24, 822(1981).
A.J. Taylor, K.M. Jones, and A.L. Schawlow, “A Study of the Excited singlet-sigma-gerade states in Na2,” Optics Comm. 39, 47 (1981).
A.J. Taylor, K.M. Jones, and A.L. Schawlow, “Scanning Pulsed Polarization Spectrometer Applied to Na2,” J. Opt. Soc. Am. 73, 994 (1983).
K.M. Jones, S. Lundgren and A. Chakravorty, “A Calculus of Variations Demonstration: The Gradient Index Lens,” Am. J. Phys. 56, 1099 (1988).
K.P. Ziock, C.D. Dermer, R.H. Howell, F. Magnotta and K.M. Jones, “Optical Saturation of the 13S-23P Transition in Positronium,” J. Phys. B 23, 329-336 (1990).
K.P. Ziock, R.H. Howell, F. Magnota, R.A. Failor and K.M. Jones, “First Observation of Resonant Excitation of High-n States in Positronium,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 64, 2366 (1990).
R.H. Howell, K.P. Ziock, F.Magnota, C.D. Dermer, R.A. Failor and K.M. Jones,”Multi-photon Optical Excitation of Positronium,” Materials Science Forum 105-110, 549-552 (1992).
C. Gerz, T.W. Hodapp, P.Jessen, K.M. Jones, W.D. Phillips, C.I. Westbrook, K. Molmer,”The Temperature of Optical Molasses for Two Different Angular Momenta,” Europhys. Lett. 21 (6), 661-666 (1993)
K. M. Jones, S. Maleki, S. Bize, P.D. Lett, C.J. Williams, H. Richling, H. Knöckel, E. Tiemann, H. Wang, P.L. Gould and W.C. Stwalley, “Direct Measurement of the Ground-State Dissociation Energy in Na2,” Phys. Rev. A 54 (2), R1006 (1996).
K. M. Jones, P.S. Julienne, P.D. Lett, W.D. Phillips, E. Tiesinga, and C.J. Williams, “Measurement of the atomic Na(3P) lifetime and of retardation in the interaction between atoms bound in a molecule,” Europhys. Lett. 35 (2), 85 (1996).
E. Tiesinga, C.J. Williams, P.S. Julienne, K.M. Jones, P.D. Lett and W.D. Phillips, ” A Spectroscopic Determination of Scattering Lengths for Sodium Atom Collisions,” J. Res. Natl. Inst. Stand. Technol. 101 , 505 (1996)
K.M. Jones, S. Maleki, L.P. Ratliff and P.D. Lett, “Two-Colour Photoassociation Spectroscopy of Ultracold Sodium,” J. Phys. B 30, 289 (1997).
Paul Lett, Kevin Jones and Paul Julienne, “Atomic Lifetimes from Molecular Spectroscopy,” Optics and Photonics News, Dec. 1996,pg 23 (Optics in 1996 news item)
Y.M. Liu,J.A. Li, D.Y. Chen, L. Li, K.M. Jones,B. Ji, R.J. Le Roy, “Molecular constants and Rydberg-Klein-Rees potential curve for the Na2 (1)3_Sigma_g State,” J. Chem. Phys. 111 (8), 3494 (1999)
K.M. Jones, P.D. Lett, E.Tiesinga, and P.S. Julienne, “Fitting line shapes in photoassociation spectroscopy of ultracold atoms: a useful approximation,” Phys. Rev. A 61, 012501 (2000).
A.Amelink, K.M. Jones, P.D. Lett, P. van der Straten and H.G.M. Heideman, “Spectroscopy of autoionizing doubly-excited states in ultracold Na2 molecules produced by photoassociation,” Phys. Rev. A 61, 042707 (2000).
A. Amelink, K.M. Jones, P.D. Lett, P. van der Straten and H.G.M. Heideman, “Single- Color Photoassociative Ionization of Ultracold Sodium: The region from 0 to –5 GHz, Phys. Rev. A 62, 013408 (2000)
F.K. Fatemi, K.M. Jones and P.D. Lett, “Observation of Optically Induced Feshbach Resonances in Collisions of Cold Atoms,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 85,4462 (2000)
Fredrik Fatemi, Kevin M. Jones, He Wang, Ian Walmsley, and Paul D. Lett, “Dynamics of photoinduced collisions of cold atoms probed with picosecond laser pulses,” Phys. Rev. A 64, 033421 (2001)
C. McKenzie, J. Hecker Denschlag, H. Häffner, A. Browaeys, Luis E. E. de Araujo, F.K. Fatemi, K.M. Jones, J. E. Simsarian, D. Cho, A. Simoni, E. Tiesinga, P.S. Julienne, K. Helmerson, P.D. Lett, S.L. Rolston, and W.D. Phillips, “Photoassociation of Sodium in a Bose-Einstein Condensate,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 120403 (2002)
Fredrik K. Fatemi, Kevin M. Jones, Paul D. Lett, and Eite Tiesinga, “Ultracold ground-state molecule production in sodium,” Phys. Rev. A 66, 053401 (2002)
Luís E. E. de Araujo, Jonathan D. Weinstein, Stephen D. Gensemer, Fredrik K. Fatemi, Kevin M. Jones, Paul D. Lett, and Eite Tiesinga, “Two-color photoassociation spectroscopy of the lowest triplet potential of Na2,” J. Chem. Phys. 119, 2062 (2003)
Eite Tiesinga, Kevin M. Jones, Paul D. Lett, Udo Volz, Carl J. Williams, and Paul S. Julienne, “Measurement and modeling of hyperfine- and rotation-induced state mixing in large weakly-bound sodium dimers,” Phys. Rev. A 71, 052703(2005)
K. Xu, Y. Liu, J.R. Abo-Shaeer, T. Mukaiyama, J.K. Chin, D.E. Miller, W. Ketterle, Kevin M. Jones, and Eite Tiesinga, “Sodium Bose-Einstein condensates in an optical lattice,” Phys. Rev. A 72, 043604 (2005)
R. Dumke, J. D. Weinstein, M. Johanning, K. M. Jones, and P. D. Lett, “SubNaturalLinewidth Quantum Interference Features Observed in Photoassociation of a Thermal Gas,” Phys. Rev. A 72, 041801 (2005) (Rapid Communications).
Kevin M. Jones, Eite Tiesinga, Paul D. Lett and Paul S. Julienne, “Ultracold photoassociation spectroscopy: Long-range molecules and atomic scattering,” Rev. Mod. Phys. 78, 483 (2006)
R. Dumke, M. Johanning, E. Gomez, J.D. Weinstein, K. M. Jones and P. D. Lett, “All optical generation and photoassociative probing of sodium Bose-Einstein condensates,” New J. Phys. 8, 64 (2006)
A. M. Marino, V. Boyer, R. C. Pooser, P. D. Lett, K. Lemons, and K. M. Jones, “Delocalized Correlations in Twin Light Beams with Orbital Angular Momentum,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 093602 (2008)
R. C. Pooser, A. M. Marino, V. Boyer, K. M. Jones, and P. D. Lett,, “Low-Noise Amplification of a Continuous-Variable Quantum State,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 010501 (2009)
R. C. Pooser, A. M. Marino, V. Boyer, K. M. Jones, and P. D. Lett, “Quantum correlated light beams from non-degenerate four-wave mixing in an atomic vapor: the D1 and D2 lines of 85Rb and 87Rb,” Optics Express 17, 16722 (2009)
Neil Corzo, Alberto M. Marino, Kevin M. Jones, and Paul D. Lett, “Multi-spatial-mode single-beam quadrature squeezed states of light from four-wave mixing in hot rubidium vapor, ” Optics Express 19, 21358 (2011)
N. V. Corzo, A. M. Marino, K. M. Jones, and P. D. Lett, “Noiseless Optical Amplifier Operating on Hundreds of Spatial Modes,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 043602 (2012)
Jeremy B. Clark, Ryan T. Glasser, Quentin Glorieux, Ulrich Vogl, Tian Li, Kevin M. Jones and Paul D. Lett, “Quantum mutual information of an entangled state propagating through a fast-light medium,” Nature Photonics 8, 515-519 (2014)
Tian Li, Brian Anderson, Travis Horrom, Kevin M. Jones and Paul D. Lett, “Effect of input phase modulation to a phase-sensitive optical amplifier,” Optics Express 24(17) 19871-19880 (2016)
Brian E. Anderson, Bonnie L. Schmittberger, Prasoon Gupta, Kevin M. Jones, and Paul D. Lett, “Optimal phase measurements with bright- and vacuum-seeded SU(1,1) interferometers,” Phys. Rev. A 95, 063843 (2017)
Brian E. Anderson, Prasoon Gupta, Bonnie L. Schmittberger, Travis Horrom, Carla Hermann-Avigliano, Kevin M. Jones, and Paul D. Lett, “Phase sensing beyond the standard quantum limit with a variation on the SU(1,1) interferometer,” Optica 4(7), 752-756 (2017)
Tian Li, Brian E. Anderson, Travis Horrom, Bonnie L. Schmittberger, Kevin M. Jones, and Paul D. Lett, “Improved measurement of two-mode quantum correlations using a phase-sensitive amplifier,” Optics Express 25(18), 21301-21311 (2017)
Prasoon Gupta, Bonnie L. Schmittberger, Brian E. Anderson, Kevin M. Jones, and Paul D. Lett, “Optimized phase sensing in a truncated SU(1,1) interferometer,” Optics Express 26(1), 391-401 (2018)
Meng-Chang Wu, Bonnie L. Schmittberger, Nicholas R. Brewer, Rory W. Speirs, Kevin M. Jones, and Paul D. Lett, “Twin-beam intensity-difference squeezing below 10 Hz,” Optics Express 27(4), 4769-4780 (2019)
Prasoon Gupta, Rory W. Speirs, Kevin M. Jones, and Paul D. Lett, “Effect of imperfect homodyne visibility on multi-spatial-mode two-mode squeezing measurements,” Optics Express 28(1), 652-664 (2020)
Meng-Chang Wu, Nicholas R. Brewer, Rory W. Speirs, Kevin M. Jones, and Paul D. Lett, “Two-beam coupling in the production of quantum correlated images by four-wave mixing,” Optics Express 29(11), 16665-16675 (2021)
Book
Kevin M. Jones and Jefferson Strait (compilers and contributors),”Optics and Spectroscopy Undergraduate Laboratory Resource Book,” Optical Society of America, Washington DC (1993) ISBN 1557522707
News Articles About My Work
Robert Service, “Timing Atomic Relationships” Science 271, 1055 (23 Feb 1996)
Paul Lett, Kevin Jones and Paul Julienne, “Atomic Lifetimes from Molecular Spectroscopy,” Optics and Photonics News, “Optics in 1996” section, Dec. 1996, pg23 (Optical Society of America).
P.S. Julienne, “Precision Molecular Spectroscopy with Cold Trapped Atoms,” Physics News in 1996, pg 6 (May 1997) (American Physical Society).
Keith Burnett, “Lasers probe long-range molecular states,” Physics World, April 1997, pg 29 (Institute of Physics).
E. Tiesinga, C.J. Williams, P.S. Julienne, K.M. Jones, P.D. Lett and W.D. Phillips, “Treasures of the Past X: A Spectroscopic Determination of Scattering Lengths for Sodium Atom Collisions,” J. Res. Natl. Inst. Stand. Technol. 107, 107-122 (2002) (A reprint of J. Res. Natl. Inst. Stand. Technol. 101, 505 (1996). In celebration of the NIST centennial the editors selected 10 articles, one from each decade, to represent the “breadth and excellence of work carried out at NIST.”)
“Delocalized Correlations in Twin Light Beams with Orbital Angular Momentum,” (PRL 101, 093602 (2008)), was selected for the September 2008 issue of the Virtual Journal of Quantum Information, published by the American Physical Society, the American Institute of Physics and other learned societies, covering a focused area of frontier research.
David Voss, “Don’t Bring the Noise,” in Physics: Spotlighting Exceptional Research, American Physical Society, a weekly online synopsis of select articles chosen by the editors of APS journals for their importance and intrinsic interest. July 29 (2012). (http://physics.aps.org/synopsis-for/10.1103/PhysRevLett.109.043602)
Stéphane Clemmen and Alexander Gaeta, “Brighter images with no added noise,” Nature 491, 202 (08 November 2012), a “News and Views” article about Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 043602 (2012).
Awards, Fellowships & Grants
Fellow of the American Physical Society (2007)
“For seminal contributions to the study of cold atomic collisions and to the development of photoassocation spectroscopy in ultracold gasses.”