Mark E. Limes

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Virginia Tech Work Princeton Spin-off Work Princeton Work Utah Work

Virginia Tech Work

I'm growing a research group that specializes in quantum sensing at the Virginia Tech National Security Institute and the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.


P.U. Spin-off Work

From Jan.~2018-Jan.~2024 I worked for a local start-up, Twinleaf LLC, mostly on a DARPA AMBIIENT grant, Atomic Magnetometer for Biological Imaging In Earth's Native Terrian (say that five times fast). Some popular articles about this project are at Daily Mail and DARPA. Our technique uses fast laser pulsing to optically pump Rb in Earth's field (0.5 G) with a goal of achieving 1 fT_{rms}/cm\sqrt{Hz} (currently at 10 fT_{rms}/cm\sqrt{Hz} in Phase 1). Our gradiometer uses a baseline of 3 cm, and aims to be dead-zone and heading error free, for the purpose of in-the field magnetoencephalography (fancy speak for readin' brain waves).
DARPA BAA for AMBIIENT




Here is my talk that I presented for DAMOP 2020.


Princeton Work

In the Romalis group, I worked on a free-precession, dual noble-gas comagnetometer that is detected with an alkali magnetometer. This device shows potential for use as a chip-scale reference NMR gyroscope, as well as searches for exotic spin couplings. Our device has reached a precision sufficient to constrain spin-gravity searches at the 10 nHz level, and is accurate enough for detection of Earth's rotation without calibration. This work is supported by DARPA and NSF grants.
DARPA BAA for C-SCAN
NSF grant #1404325

View post on imgur.com


A continuation of this work is being supported by an ONR grant, where 3He-21Ne cells are used. Initial testing shows that our 3He-21Ne cells are working well, with a 21Ne relaxation of roughly 2 hours.
ONR BAA

3He21Ne129Xe Oh My!


Utah Work

In the Saam group, I worked on hyperpolarizing noble gases with alkali metals, and did basic research in magnetic resonance under an NSF grant and a Swigart Foundation grant. In addition, I collaborated with the Boehme, Lupton, Raikh, and Vardeny groups at University of Utah, using magnetic resonance techniques to characterize organic semiconducting material under an NSF MRSEC grant.

NSF grant #1121252
NSF grant #0855482

Utah