Research Highlights | Department of Physics, Engineering Physics & Astronomy

Left: A compact object microlensing light from a star, causing a star to appear brighter. Middle: A puffy dark matter cloud which is no longer compact enough to produce a microlensing effect. Right: A puffy dark matter cloud acting as a lampshade, causing starlight to dim due to interactions between photons from the star and constituent dark matter particles in the lampshade.

Dimming Starlight with Dark Compact Objects

Apr 08, 2025

PhD student Leo Kim, postdoctorate Melissa Diamond, and professor Joe Bramante publish their research in the prestigious Physical Review Letters.

Prof. Gao and team's editor's choice publication called Extremely Large Polymer Light-Emitting Electrochemical Cells with Concentric Circular Electrodes

Extremely Large Polymer Light-Emitting Electrochemical Cells with Concentric Circular Electrodes

Feb 04, 2025

Editor's Choice publication for Abishake Goyal, Dongze Wang and Prof. Gao in Advanced Materials Technologies.

Cover from Optica Quantum April 2024 Edition

Jun 05, 2024

Cover from Optica Quantum features the research of Becca VanDrunen, Juanjuan Ren and Sebastian Franke, from the Hughes Group.

Plot showing constraints on dark matter nucleon interactions. Previously existing constraints from detectors are shown in gray. Astrophysical constraints are marked by the blue line. New constraints from electron recoil detectors are shown in red. The expected sensitivity of upcoming electron recoil detectors is outlined in red. For WIMPs with masses between about 1 and several hundred MeV, Electron recoil detectors will be the more sensitive to certain weak WIMP nucleon interactions than any available dete

Giving Dark Matter Detectors New Targets

Feb 05, 2024

Exciting findings by postdocs Melissa Diamond and Chris Cappiello show how the existing interactions between Standard Model particles can improve the reach and sensitivity of existing dark matter detectors.

Sample figure of Cavity-enhanced side peaks in the spectra of dynamic RF.

Paper in Nature Photonics on long sought-after regime in quantum optics

Jan 12, 2024

Prof. Hughes and collaborators publish a new paper on sought-after regime in quantum optics.

Potential polar ring around galaxy NGC 4632

'Polar Ring' Galaxies Found

Sep 13, 2023

Rare 'polar rings' found surrounding galaxies NGC 4632 and NGC 6156

Dark matter in compact stars

Sep 05, 2023

Learn more about dark matter by watching how it behaves in the intense gravity of neutron stars

First evidence of reactor antineutrinos in a water Cherenkov detector

Mar 01, 2023

The SNO+ Collaboration find evidence that pure water can be used to measure antineutrinos from reactors at large distances

In a cocktail-party effect, the brain can focus on a single conversation in a noisy room. This is called blind source separation (BSS). We show a photonic (light-based) processor can isolate wireless signals from a noisy environment.

Photonic processor can isolate wireless signals from a noisy environment

Feb 28, 2023

Research by Prof. Shastri, Prof. Tait and their team is published in Nature Communications

An imperfect quantum photonic neural network-based Bell-state analyzer with fabrication imperfections modelled after state-of-the-art silicon-on-insulator photonic elements (U, inset) and weak optical Kerr nonlinearities (Σ(π/4)). The network is trained to perform the input-output mapping of the Bell-state analyzer (see truth table) in the presence of all component-by-component errors, and thus learns to both overcome fabrication imperfections and get the most out of the available nonlinearities.

Imperfect Quantum Photonic Neural Networks

Jan 31, 2023

Jacob Ewaniuk, a MASC candidate has his work published in Advanced Quantum Technologies

The photonic chip used for teaching hardware

Teaching photonic chips to learn

Nov 22, 2022

Prof. Shastri and multi-institution team has developed an optical chip that can train machine learning hardware

The skymap of high-energy neutrinos around NGC 1068 vicinity

Evidence of Neutrino Emission from NGC1068

Nov 03, 2022

Prof. Park and colleagues, part of the IceCUBE Neutrino Observatory, find evidence of neutrino emission in their latest research