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Jack Harris

Professor of Physics and Applied Physics

Research Areas: 

Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics

Research Type: 

Experimentalist

Current Projects: 

Optomechanics: Radiation Pressure - Radiation pressure in the quantum engine, Optical control of microstructures, Mechanical control of nonclassical light and Persistent Current - Microcantilevers and probes of closed mesoscopic systems, In-situ electron thermometry, Persistent currents in normal-metal rings

Jack Harris is Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Yale University, and is also a member of the Yale Quantum Institute. He received his undergraduate degree from Cornell University and his Ph.D. from UCSB, where he developed ultrasensitive micromechanical sensors and used them to study quantum Hall systems in the group of David Awschalom. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard/MIT Center for Ultracold Atoms, where he worked with John Doyle and Wolfgang Ketterle on a cryogenic atom-trapping experiment. Since joining the Yale faculty in 2004, his group has developed novel approaches to the field of quantum optomechanics, including the “membrane-in-the-middle” device, and various means for combining high-finesse optical cavities with superfluid helium.

Professor Harris studies the quantum aspects of motion in macroscopic objects that combine mechanical, optical, and superfluid components. His group’s experiments use ultrasensitive force detectors to measure quantum fluctuations of objects that are visible to the naked eye. These experiments are also used to study novel topological features in the dynamics of coupled oscillators.

Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellow, 2019

APS Fellow (Division of Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics), 2016

Arthur Greer Memorial Prize, 2009

DARPA Young Faculty Award, 2009

Yale University Junior Faculty Fellowship, 2008

Sloan Research Fellowship, 2007

Quantum optomechanics in a liquid, A.B. Shkarin, A.D. Kashkanova, C.D. Brown, S. Garcia, K. Ott, J. Reichel, J.G.E. Harris. Phys. Rev. Lett 122, 153601 (2019).

https://harrislab.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/QuantumOptomechanicsInALiquid-Full.pdf

Nonreciprocal control and cooling of phonon modes in an optomechanical system, H. Xu, L. Jiang, A.A. Clark, J.G.E. Harris. Nature 568, 65-69 (2019).

https://harrislab.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/2019Nature.pdf

Cavity Optomechanics in a Levitated Helium Droplet, L. Childress, M.P. Schmidt, A.D. Kashkanova, C.D. Brown, G.I. Harris, A. Aiello, F. Marquardt, J.G.E. Harris. Phys. Rev. A 96, 063842 (2017) .

https://harrislab.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/cavityOptomechanicsInALevitatedHeliumDrop-full.pdf

Topological energy transfer in an optomechanical system with an exceptional point, H. Xu, D. Mason, L. Jiang, J. G. E. Harris. Nature 537, 80-83 (2016).

https://harrislab.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/nature18604_final.pdf

Nicole Sheriko

Assistant Professor of English

I study Renaissance performance culture, drawing on literary studies as well as theater history, art history, performance studies, and archives of material culture. My interests are anchored around two key questions—How does theater work? and Why do people play?—questions that take me from rare book libraries and museums to backstage prop stores and reconstructed theater spaces. I write about theater of all kinds from cycle, civic, court, and commercial drama to processional performance and puppetry. I am also interested in the medieval precursors to and afterlives of early modern drama, especially the legacies of Shakespeare. My current work investigates object performance as a culturally central but critically marginal element of early English performance. I am currently completing a book about early English puppetry’s forms of performance interactivity and a volume of essays on Early European Puppetry Studies as a field. Other ongoing research concerns animal performance, dragons, popular entertainment, and clowning, which will be the subject of my next book.

My work has appeared in Shakespeare Quarterly, Shakespeare Survey, Studies in English Literature, Shakespeare Studies, Nineteenth Century Studies, the Routledge Encyclopedia of the Renaissance World, and Arden collections Shakespeare/Play and Early Modern Performance Beyond the Public Stage. Recent essays have won awards from the Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society, the American Society for Theater Research, and UNIMA-USA. My research has been supported by the Mellon Foundation, American Council of Learned Societies, Renaissance Society of America, Shakespeare Association of America, and Folger Shakespeare, Huntington, and Bodleian Libraries. 

Before coming to Yale I was the A H Lloyd Junior Research Fellow in English at Christ’s College, University of Cambridge, a post for which I was endorsed by the British Academy.

updated August 2024