CASE Senior Scientist
- Office:
- MCP
- Email:
- aschou@uchicago.edu
Background
Chou earned his BA in Physics from Cornell University and his PhD in Applied Physics from Stanford University. He was a Wilson Fellow at Fermilab and won the U.S. Department of Energy's Outstanding Junior Investigator award in high energy physics as well as the DOE Early Career Award. He became famous for conducting the highly economical GammeV laser axion search experiment as a postdoc and subsequently notorious for proposing the Holometer experiment which searched for space-time holographic noise using large scale optical interferometers. He served as the analysis chair for the Axion Dark Matter eXperiment (ADMX) before teaming up with quantum computing experts to implement superconducting qubits as the world's best single microwave photon detectors. He headed a 10-institution DOE QuantISED consortium to develop quantum sensors for dark matter searches, and is now the Devices/Sensors thrust lead for the Quantum Science Center, one of the 5 National Quantum Initiative Science Research Centers. He currently serves as Deputy Director of Fermilab's Quantum Division.
Research
Chou’s research focuses on developing quantum metrology techniques to study ultra-weakly-coupled dark sectors of the universe. Current topics include 1) detecting axion dark matter using entangled probe state preparation and superconducting qubit-based signal readout; 2) detecting dark radiation from dark energy relaxation using Cooper-pair boxes as quasiparticle detectors; 3) developing gravitational wave detectors based on high magnetic fields in order to probe early universe cosmological phase transitions and quantum gravity; and 4) investigating emergent gauge symmetries in condensed matter systems such as quantum spin liquids.