Yale Physics welcomes postdoctoral associate Thomas Penny to the Moore Lab

Yale Physics welcomes postdoctoral associate Thomas Penny, who will be working on levitated optomechanics at Wright Lab with assistant professor of physics David Moore.

 

Penny said, “I work with microscale and nanoscale, levitated objects to investigate fundamental physics. In my Ph.D, I used electric fields to levitate nanoscale silica spheres and developed a platform for exploring quantum physics on the macroscopic scale. In particular, I made preliminary measurements to bound the force noise that may be generated by spontaneous collapse models and demonstrated control over a system of two co-trapped nanoparticles coupled via the Coulomb force. At Yale, I am shifting to a different levitation method and area of research. I work with intense lasers to levitate microscale particles that are highly sensitive to impulse forces. The aim is to measure the small momentum kicks generated by events such as alpha particle decay or dark matter collisions.”