Professor Duan's research focuses on theory and implementation of quantum information and strongly correlated physics with ultracold atoms. Quantum information science concerns the understanding and application of the mysterious concept of "entanglement" arising from quantum mechanics. One main task of quantum information science is to find physical implementations in which quantum entanglement can be created and manipulated at will for realization of super-fast quantum computation or for secure quantum communication and cryptography. His group is pursuing innovative ideas and theoretical schemes to significantly advance implementation of quantum information in various kinds of physical systems.

For ultracold atoms, the primary interest of Professor Duan's group lies in the study of strongly correlated many-body phenomena when these atoms (Bose-Einstein condensate or degenerate Fermionic atomic gas) are loaded into an optical lattice. They propose diverse methods to engineer many-body Hamiltonians by the optical lattice design and by control of the atomic interaction strength and their spin states. This system, on the one hand, can be used to simulate various other strongly correlated systems to achieve a better understanding of the involved physics, and on the other hand, provides a platform to study new strongly correlated phenomena.

Controlling Spin Exchange Interactions of Ultracold Atoms in Optical Lattices, (L. M. Duan, E. Demler, M. D. Lukin), Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 090402 (2003).

Efficient Engineering of Multi-Atom Entanglement Through Single-Photon Detection, (L. M. Duan, J. Kimble), Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 253601 (2003).

Generation of Nonclassical Photon Pairs for Scalable Quantum Communication, (A. Kuzmich, W. P. Bowen, A. D. Boozer, A. Boca, C. W. Chou, L. M. Duan, and H. J. Kimble), Nature 423, 731-734 (2003).

Long-Distance Quantum Communication with Atomic Ensembles and Linear Optics, (L. M. Duan, M. Lukin, J. I. Cirac, P. Zoller), Nature 414, 413-418 (2001).

Geometric Manipulation of Trapped Ions for Quantum Computation, (L. M. Duan, J. I. Cirac, P. Zoller), Science 292, 1695-1697(2001).

Many-Particle Entanglement with Bose-Einstein Condensates, (A. Sorensen, L. M. Duan, J. I. Cirac, P. Zoller), Nature 409, 63-66 (2001).

Inseparability Criterion for Continuous Variable Systems, (L. M. Duan, G. Giedke, J. I. Cirac, P. Zoller), Phys. Rev. Lett. 84, 2722 (2000).

Squeezing and Entanglement of Atomic Beams, (L. M. Duan, A. Sorensen, J. I. Cirac, P. Zoller), Phys. Rev. Lett. 85, 3991 (2000).