UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Jun Ye, professor of physics and JILA Fellow at the University of Colorado Boulder, will present the 2026 Russell E. Marker Lectures in Physics on Sept. 30 and Oct. 1 on the Penn State University Park campus. These free public lectures are sponsored by the Penn State Eberly College of Science.
The series includes a lecture intended for a general audience, titled "Lighting a Quantum Path for Clocks and Fundamental Physics," at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 30, in 119 Osmond Laboratory, as well as a more-specialized lecture, "Molecules Under New Light," at 3:30 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 1, in 117 Osmond Laboratory.
“Lighting a Quantum Path for Clocks and Fundamental Physics”
Laser physics and quantum science have fueled revolutionary developments in atomic and fundamental physics. Precise quantum-state engineering has brought tens of thousands of atoms to minute-long coherence, enabling a new regime for measurement precision. Quantum entanglement is advancing the clock performance beyond the standard quantum limit. The combination of phase-stable laser, ultrafast optics and precision metrology also provides new tools for nuclear physics, leading to the recent breakthrough of quantum-state-resolved laser spectroscopy of thorium-229 nuclear transition. The permeation of quantum metrology to all corners of physics sparks new ideas for testing fundamental laws of nature and searching for new physics.
About the speaker
Jun Ye is a professor of physics and JILA Fellow at UC Boulder, a fellow of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. His research focuses on the development of new tools for light-matter interactions and their applications in precision measurement, quantum science, and frequency metrology. He has co-authored 450 scientific papers and delivered 750 invited talks. Among his awards and honors are five Gold Medals from the U.S. Department of Commerce; the Norman F. Ramsey Prize and the I.I. Rabi Prize, both from the American Physical Society; the I.I. Rabi Award from IEEE; and the William F. Meggers Award from Optica. His recent honors include the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, the Berthold Leibinger Future Prize, the Niels Bohr Institute Medal of Honour, the Herbert Walther Award and the Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship. More information about Ye’s research group is available on the UC Boulder JILA website.
About the Marker Lectures
The Marker Lectures were established in 1984 through a gift from the late Russell Earl Marker, professor emeritus of organic chemistry at Penn State, whose pioneering synthetic methods revolutionized the steroid hormone industry and opened the door to the current era of hormone therapies, including the birth control pill.
The Marker endowment allows the Penn State Eberly College of Science to present annual Marker Lectures in astronomy and astrophysics, the chemical sciences, evolutionary biology, genetic engineering, the mathematical sciences, and the physical sciences.