The quantum choreographer

Listening to Ashok Ajoy PhD ’16 talk about his work, it’s easy to forget he’s a physicist. “I make spins dance together, go up or down, interact, in a kind of spin choreography,” he says.

Ajoy unleashes his creativity not on human bodies but on elementary particles, manipulating quantum behavior, and specifically, spin — the property of angular momentum intrinsic to such entities as atomic nuclei.

After doctoral research at MIT generating insights on spin and novel methods for maneuvering quantum mechanical objects, Ajoy is now pioneering technologies with the potential to transform the fields of imaging and chemical analysis. Using diamond dust,…
MIT News – Nanoscience and nanotechnology – MIT.nano