University of New Mexico Assistant Professor Elohim Becerra received a National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award for his proposal "Quantum Measurements for Optical Communications."

The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program is NSF’s most prestigious award in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research within the community. The NSF CAREER program is geared toward helping early-career faculty get strong starts on their academic careers.

Becerra is an assistant professor with UNM's Department of Physics & Astronomy. His research interests are in optics and experimental research in quantum optics, nonlinear optics and quantum information. Becerra is a faculty member in the new Quantum Optics track for the UNM Optical Science and Engineering program and leader of the Quantum Optics Research Group.

He is an experimental physicist with the Center for Quantum Information and Control (CQulC), funded by the NSF and co-located at UNM and the University of Arizona in Tucson. The quantum properties of physical systems have a large potential for enabling technologies with unprecedented capabilities. The Quantum Optics group's interests include the study of measurements with sensitivities beyond conventional limits of detection, and the study of quantum-state superpositions from the interaction of light and matter for quantum information and communication protocols.

The group studies the technologies that can be enabled by these quantum systems and seeks to understand the limits of such quantum technologies. Applications of these studies include quantum and coherent communications, metrology, and quantum information processing.

Becerra has been the Principal Investigator (PI) and Co-PI for a number of published papers.

May 22, 2017