Mikkel F. Andersen

Mikkel F. Andersen is a physicist, an associate professor at the University of Otago, and an investigator at the Dodd-Walls Centre in Dunedin, New Zealand. His research deals with ways to capture fast-moving atoms.

Education A sequence of two rubidium atoms initially in separate optical tweezers being brought together so they can interact. Born in Denmark, Anderson did his MSc in physics and mathematics at Aarhus University, graduating in 1999. He then studied laser cooling at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, finishing his PhD in the physics of complex systems in 2004. From 2004 to 2006 he did a post-doc at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, studying laser cooling with Nobel Laureate William D. Phillips, inventor of the Zeeman slower. Laser cooling – shining a laser in the opposite direction an atom is travelling, slowing it and reducing its temperature to one millionth of a degree above absolute zero – puts an atom in a quantum state and allows it to be manipulated.

Andersen's team first isolated, captured, and photographed a rubidium atom in 2010. Now individual pairs of atoms can then be held in place with lasers – "optical tweezers" – and observed colliding and entangling. More recent experiments have assembled three individual atoms into a molecule and measured the energy released in the process. This research has implications for quantum computer development,

Selected publications