Who’s Who at the Lab-Yogesh Patil

I masquerade as a full-time quantum physicist, working on a variety of optomechanical systems in the quantum (and classical) regime in Jack Harris’ group.  

 

 

I started working at Wright Lab (WL) in 2018 as a postdoc working on superfluid Helium filled fiber-optic cavities.  Since 2019, I have also worked with silicon-nitride membranes in optical cavities, and, since this fall, have also been working on levitating superfluid Helium drops and water drops, probed optically. A common physics theme that we explore in these experiments is quantum mechanics at the macroscopic scale–just how large (massive) can an object be before the known laws break down, or not? And there are a bunch of exceptional results we’ve amassed along the way! 

 

Exceptional points generically form knots, or, when you remove exactly one phonon from an oscillator, it retaliates by doubling its phonon occupancy (!?!), or, when you remove exactly two phonons from an oscillator, it triples its phonon occupancy (it just doesn’t want to reduce its phonon occupancy, poor chap, so we left it alone… no we didn’t!), or, bounding a phenomenological quantum-gravity non-locality length scale to about the same as the LHC, or, … (talk to me!)…

 

I think the ‘most’ exciting time for me–defined as, say, heart beating faster, accompanied by an adrenaline rush–was right here on the second floor in Wright Lab West (WLW) 327! The time we saw first light–ironically, it was literally photons scattered by the Helium reaching our single photon detectors, one click at a time. I don’t think a bunch have ever been as excited as we were that night seeing a Lorentzian unveil itself <lol>. I’m going to hold on to that feeling for a while. I have been extremely lucky to have three such experiences during my Ph.D. (I am a proficient cold-atom physicist, actually), and then three more here, so far–as cherishable as falling in love, I’d say!

 

And then, honestly, there have been a bunch of epiphanies of the mind just sitting in WL, or simply sensual experiences right outside the WL doors, which were unique and pleasurable, like the first snow of the season; a purple sky with rainbows; a full moon rising over East Rock overlooking Peace; a typhoon happening within the time you go back and forth between WL and SPL; or just a pleasant November sunrise over the freemason’s lodge; or the trees right outside WL deciding to shed on the day of the equinox! And so on… Beauty, they say, is in the eye of the beholder, but it helps that the WL peripheries have offered a bunch over the years to behold and to share.

 

Free food! Jokes aside (or maybe not!), the pandemic has been a bummer in several ways, but I am excited for the in-person talks and seminars, and the semblance of an active research institute. We’re getting there already, and I hope we’ll be back full-fledged in the coming year. 

 

Also, workwise, we will be getting five new experiments online this year, following a recent acquisition of our shiny new labs in the Yale Science Building (YSB), so there are a bunch of discoveries and experiences awaiting (and a bunch of grunt work too, but meh). Fingers crossed!

 

Back in the day (and no, I’m not that old), I used to speak five languages proficiently (English, Marathi, Hindi, Sanskrit, and Japanese), play a percussion instrument, and sing. Then Physics came along and ruined my life (and potential lives) in almost as many ways as it enriched it, sigh. Ooo, one last one–I enjoy music, like any normal human, but, in equal measure, instrumental, rock, country, whatever this is called, choir/gospel, and Carnatic.