Zachary John Dutton is an American physicist who has worked on research centred mainly around cold atomic gases, EIT, low light level nonlinear optics, quantum memories, and coherent optical. Dutton graduated from Lindsay High School in Lindsay CA, and was awarded a BSc in physics from UC Berkeley in 1996. He was awarded his PhD in theoretical physics at Harvard University in 2000. His doctoral advisor was Prof.Lene Hau for his thesis entitled "Ultra-slow, stopped, and compressed light in Bose–Einstein condensates" [1] He worked on a number of papers with Hau and Cyrus Behroozi, being amongst the first group to stop light completely. He undertook postdoctoral work at NIST–Gaithersburg with Dr. Charles Clark, prior to becoming a staff physicist at the Naval Research Lab in Washington. He conducted research centred mainly around cold atomic gases, EIT, low light level nonlinear optics, quantum memories, and coherent optical storage.
Dutton took a position at Raytheon BBN Technologies Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2007, where his research continued, and he is currently the manager of the Quantum Information Processing (QuIP)[2] group at Raytheon BBN Technologies. QuIP conducts ongoing research, and has facilities in the following areas:
- Bits and Waves Lab
- Quantum Cryptography
- Quantum Sensors
- Superconducting Digital Receivers and Coprocessors
- Superconducting Qubit Systems
In 2011, Dutton and colleagues achieved a breakthrough, recorded in "Direct Observation of Coherent Population Trapping in a Superconducting Artificial Atom".[3] The paper describes a physics breakthrough that Dutton predicted in a paper he published in 2004.[4] The work establishes a major advance in quantum information technology with the coupling of light and superconductors,[5] and is the first instance of light being able to co-exist with superconductors. Normally light (photons) is absorbed by superconductors, but Dutton's team discovered that applying a second field at a different frequency can be used to prevent this absorption, making the artificial atom effectively transparent. The United States Department of Defense has granted further research monies to this project "to create tools and methods that integrate all aspects of the quantum computer".[6]
