Deborah S. Jin

Deborah Shiu-lan Jin (November 15, 1968 – September 15, 2016) was an American physicist and fellow with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST); Professor Adjunct, Department of Physics at the University of Colorado; and a fellow of the JILA, a NIST joint laboratory with the University of Colorado.[1][2]

Deborah S. Jin
Born(1968-11-15)November 15, 1968
Stanford, California
DiedSeptember 15, 2016(2016-09-15) (aged 47)
Boulder, Colorado
Alma materPrinceton University (A.B.)
University of Chicago (Ph.D.)
Known forfermionic condensate
AwardsMacArthur Fellowship (2003)
Benjamin Franklin Medal (2008)
Isaac Newton Medal (2014)
Scientific career
FieldsPhysics
InstitutionsNational Institute of Standards and Technology;
University of Colorado at Boulder
ThesisExperimental study of the phase diagrams of heavy fermion superconductors with multiple transitions (1995)
Doctoral advisorThomas F. Rosenbaum
Doctoral studentsBrian L. DeMarco
Cindy Regal
WebsiteJin Group at Colorado

She was considered a pioneer in polar molecular quantum chemistry.[3][4] From 1995 to 1997 she worked with Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman at JILA, where she was involved in some of the earliest studies of dilute gas Bose-Einstein condensates.[5] In 2003, Dr. Jin's team at JILA made the first fermionic condensate, a new form of matter.[6] She used magnetic traps and lasers to cool fermionic atomic gases to less than 100 billionths of a degree above zero, successfully demonstrating quantum degeneracy and the formation of a molecular Bose-Einstein condensate.[7][8] Jin was frequently mentioned as a strong candidate for the Nobel Prize in Physics.[9][10] In 2002, Discover magazine recognized her as one of the 50 most important women in science.[11]

Early life

Jin was born in Santa Clara County, California,[12] Jin was one of three children, and grew up in Indian Harbour Beach, Florida.[13] Her father was a physicist and her mother a physicist working as an engineer.[13]

Education

Jin graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University in 1990, receiving an A.B. in physics after completing a senior thesis titled "A Condensation-Pumped Dilution Refrigerator for Use in Cooling Millimeter Wave Bolometer Detectors".[14][5][15] She was a recipient of the Allen G. Shenstone Prize in Physics in 1990.

Jin then studied at the University of Chicago, where she was a NSF Graduate Fellow from 1990 to 1993 and received a Ph.D. in physics in 1995, completing a doctoral thesis titled "Experimental Study of the Phase Diagrams of Heavy Fermion Superconductors with Multiple Transitions" under the supervision of Thomas Felix Rosenbaum.[16]

Major scientific contributions

After completing her Ph.D., Jin joined Eric Cornell's group at JILA, the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics in Boulder, Colorado, as a postdoctoral researcher. This change from condensed matter to atomic physics required her to learn a new set of experimental techniques. Jin joined Cornell's group soon after they achieved the first Rubidium Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), and performed experiments characterizing its properties.[17]

In 1997, Jin formed her own group at JILA. Within two years, she developed the ability to create the first quantum degenerate gas of fermionic atoms. The work was motivated by earlier studies of BEC's and the ability to cool a dilute gas of atoms to 1 μK. The weak interactions between particles in a Bose-Einstein Condensate led to interesting physics. It was theorized that fermionic atoms would form an analogous state at low enough temperatures, with fermions pairing up in a phenomenon similar to the creation of Cooper pairs in superconducting materials.[18]

The work was complicated by the fact that, unlike bosons, fermions cannot occupy the same quantum state at the same time, due to the Pauli exclusion principle, and are therefore limited with regard to cooling mechanisms. At low enough temperature evaporative cooling, an important technique used to reach low enough temperature to create the first BEC's, is no longer effective for fermions. To circumvent this issue, Jin and her team cooled potassium-40 atoms in two different magnetic sublevels. This enabled atoms in different sublevels to collide with each other, restoring the efficacy of evaporative cooling. Using this technique, Jin and her group were able to produce a degenerate Fermi gas at a temperature of about 300 nK, or half the Fermi temperature of the mixture.[19][20]

In 2003, Jin and her team were the first to condense pairs of fermionic atoms. They directly observed a molecular Bose-Einstein condensate created solely by adjusting the interaction strength in an ultracold Fermi gas of atoms using a Feshbach resonance. She was able to observe transitions of the gas between a Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) state and Bose-Einstein condensate.[21]

In 2008, Jin and her team developed a technique analogous to Angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy which allowed them to measure excitations of their degenerate gas with both energy- and momentum-resolution. They used this approach to study the nature of fermion pairing across the BCS-BEC crossover, the same system her group had first explored in 2003.[22] These experiments provided the first experimental evidence of a pseudogap in the BCS-BEC crossover.[23]

Jin continued to advance the frontiers of ultracold science when she and her colleague, Jun Ye, managed to cool polar molecules that possess a large electric dipole moment to ultracold temperatures, also in 2008. Rather than directly cool polar molecules, they created a gas of ultracold atoms and then transformed them into dipolar molecules in a coherent way. This work led to novel insights regarding the chemical reactions near absolute zero. They were able to observe and control potassium-rubidium (KRb) molecules in the lowest energy state (ground state). They were even able to observe molecules colliding and breaking and forming chemical bonds.[24] Jin's husband, John Bohn, who specialized in the theory of ultracold atomic collisions, collaborated with her on this work.

Mentorship

Jin mentored two dozen doctoral students, two dozen undergraduates and two dozen postdoctoral fellows. Her mentorship made a lasting impact on those who worked with her.[25]

Honors and awards

Jin was an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences (2005)[4] and Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2007).[26][27]

Jin won a number of prestigious awards, including:

  • 2001, NIST Samuel W. Stratton Award
  • 2000, Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering[1]
  • 2002, Maria Goeppert-Mayer Award[5]
  • 2002, National Academy of Sciences Award for Initiatives in Research
  • 2003, MacArthur Fellowship "genius grant"[28]
  • 2003, Arthur S. Flemming Award (Scientific Category)
  • 2004, Service to America Medal: Science and the Environment
  • 2004, Scientific American's "Research Leader of the Year"[29]
  • 2005, American Physical Society, I.I. Rabi Prize
  • 2006, Bonfils-Stanton Foundation Award in Science and Medicine
  • 2008, The Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics[30]
  • 2009, Sigma Xi, The William Proctor Prize for Scientific Achievement
  • 2011, Gold Medal, NIST, Department of Commerce
  • 2013, L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Award Laureate for North America[31][32]
  • 2014, The Institute of Physics Isaac Newton Medal [33]
  • 2014, Comstock Prize in Physics, "for a recent innovative discovery or investigation in electricity, magnetism, or radiant energy."[4][7]
  • 2014, “Most Influential Scientific Minds of 2014,” with Jun Ye, released from Thomson Reuters

After her passing, the American Physical Society renamed its prestigious DAMOP graduate student prize after Deborah Jin to acknowledge her impact in the field of atomic, molecular, and optical physics.[34]

Personal life

Jin married John Bohn, and had a daughter, Jaclyn Bohn.[13] Jin died of cancer on September 15, 2016 in Boulder, Colorado.[13][35]

References
  1. "Deborah S. Jin". JILA, University of Colorado. Retrieved 3 December 2015.
  2. "Interview with Deborah S. Jin". Annenberg Learner. Annenberg Foundation. Retrieved 3 December 2015.
  3. B DeMarco, J Bohn, and E Cornell (2016) "Deborah S. Jin", Nature 538(7625), 318.
  4. Ost, Laura. "JILA/NIST Fellow Deborah Jin to Receive 2014 Comstock Prize in Physics". NIST Tech Beat. Retrieved January 29, 2014.
  5. "2002 Maria Goeppert Mayer Award Recipient Deborah S. Jin". American Physical Society. Retrieved 3 December 2015.
  6. "A New Form of Matter: II, NASA-supported researchers have discovered a weird new phase of matter called fermionic condensates". Science News. Nasa Science. February 12, 2004.
  7. Galvin, Molly (January 16, 2014). "Academy Honors 15 for Major Contributions to Science". News from the National Academy of Sciences. National Academy of Sciences. Archived from the original on 8 December 2015. Retrieved 3 December 2015.
  8. Regal, C. A.; Greiner, M.; Jin, D. S. (28 January 2004). "Observation of Resonance Condensation of Fermionic Atom Pairs". Physical Review Letters. 92 (4): 040403. arXiv:cond-mat/0401554. Bibcode:2004PhRvL..92d0403R. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.92.040403. PMID 14995356.
  9. Chang, Kenneth (2016-09-21). "Deborah S. Jin Dies at 47; Physicist Studied Matter in Extreme Cold". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2017-06-13.
  10. Orzel, Chad. "Predicting The Nobel Prize In Physics". Forbes. Retrieved 2017-06-13.
  11. Svitil, Kathy (13 November 2002). "The 50 Most Important Women in Science". Discover. Retrieved 21 December 2014.
  12. "California Birth Index, 1905-1995". FamilySearch. Retrieved September 19, 2016.
  13. Weil, Martin. "Deborah Jin, government physicist who won MacArthur 'genius' grant, dies at 47". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2016-09-22.
  14. "Deborah S. Jin - CV" (PDF).
  15. Jin, Deborah S. (1990). A Condensation-Pumped Dilution Refrigerator for Use in Cooling Millimeter Wave Bolometer Detectors. Princeton, NJ: Department of Physics.
  16. Jin, Deborah Shiu-lan (1995). Experimental study of the phase diagrams of heavy fermion superconductors with multiple transitions (Ph.D.). The University of Chicago. OCLC 833462117 – via ProQuest.
  17. Chang, Kenneth. "Lives: Deborah Jin '90". Princeton Alumin Weekly. Retrieved 26 July 2019.
  18. DeMarco, B.; Jin, D. S. (1 December 1998). "Exploring a quantum degenerate gas of fermionic atoms". Physical Review A. 58 (6): R4267–R4270. arXiv:cond-mat/9807406. Bibcode:1998PhRvA..58.4267D. doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.58.R4267.
  19. "Fermion gas achieves quantum degeneracy". Physics World. 12 (10): 5. 5 April 1999. doi:10.1088/2058-7058/12/10/2.
  20. DeMarco, B.; Jin, D. S. (10 September 1999). "Onset of Fermi Degeneracy in a Trapped Atomic Gas". Science. 285 (5434): 1703–1706. doi:10.1126/science.285.5434.1703. PMID 10481000.
  21. Greiner, Markus; Regal, Cindy A.; Jin, Deborah S. (2003). "Emergence of a molecular Bose–Einstein condensate from a Fermi gas". Nature. 426 (6966): 537–540. Bibcode:2003Natur.426..537G. doi:10.1038/nature02199. PMID 14647340.
  22. Stewart, J. T.; Gaebler, J. P.; Jin, D. S. (August 2008). "Using photoemission spectroscopy to probe a strongly interacting Fermi gas". Nature. 454 (7205): 744–747. arXiv:0805.0026. doi:10.1038/nature07172. PMID 18685703.
  23. Gaebler, J. P.; Stewart, J. T.; Drake, T. E.; Jin, D. S.; Perali, A.; Pieri, P.; Strinati, G. C. (4 July 2010). "Observation of pseudogap behaviour in a strongly interacting Fermi gas". Nature Physics. 6 (8): 569–573. arXiv:1003.1147. doi:10.1038/nphys1709.
  24. "Ultracold Molecules - Ye Group". jila.colorado.edu.
  25. Ni, Kang-Kuen; Greiner, Markus; Ospelkaus, Silke (31 January 2017). "Deborah S. Jin 1968–2016: Trailblazer of ultracold science". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 114 (5): 791–792. doi:10.1073/pnas.1619292114. PMC 5293022. PMID 28039435.
  26. "Professor Deborah S. Jin". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Retrieved 3 December 2015.
  27. "2007 Class of Fellows and Foreign Honorary Members by Class and Section" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 3 December 2015.
  28. "MacArthur Fellows / Meet the Class of 2003 Deborah Jin". MacArthur Foundation. Retrieved 3 December 2015.
  29. Holloway, Marguerite (2004). "Superhot among the Ultracool". Scientific American. 291 (September): 40–42. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0904-40. PMID 15376749.
  30. "Deborah Jin". The Franklin Institute. Retrieved 2 December 2015.
  31. Davidowitz, Suzie (October 22, 2012). "L'OREAL-UNESCO for Women in Science Names Professor Deborah Jin 2013 Laureate for North America". Market Wired. Retrieved 3 December 2015.
  32. "Five exceptional women scientists receive L'OREAL-UNESCO Awards". News Africa. 8 April 2013. Archived from the original on 7 September 2016. Retrieved 3 December 2015.
  33. "Institute of Physics announces 2014 award winners". Institute of Physics. Retrieved 4 July 2014.
  34. "Deborah Jin's Legacy Honored by DAMOP". www.aps.org. Retrieved 2017-06-13.
  35. "Deborah Jin Dies at 47". JILA. Archived from the original on 19 September 2016. Retrieved 19 September 2016.

Further reading
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