Research overview

My research is quantum control theory: finding the pulses and protocols that steer a quantum system robustly to where we want it. Sensing and metrology are my main application, and quantum information—quantum gates and spoofing detection—is my second line. These are directions I have been building and plan to keep developing as an ongoing program.

Quantum Sensing and Metrology

I design the control protocols that let quantum sensors reach their limits. This is the main topic of my postdoctoral work.

• Spin squeezing. I developed the control protocols—both optimized pulse sequences and adiabatic methods—that generate highly spin-squeezed states, in collaboration with Prof. Vladan Vuletić's group at MIT. With the same group, we proposed time-reversal interferometry using Schrödinger-cat states with scalable entangling resources.
• Tractor atom interferometer (TAI). Michael Goerz and I design the interferometer trajectories using optimal quantum control for the TAI, a new device built with Prof. Georg Raithel's group at the University of Michigan. Depending on the trajectories, the device works as an accelerometer or a gyroscope.
• NV centers and diamond clocks. We bring new quantum control solutions to NV-center experiments with Prof. Dmitry Budker's group—using STIRAP to improve the long-term stability of a diamond-based gyroscope, introducing dynamical elimination (see below), and working toward a temperature-insensitive composite diamond clock (an Editors' Suggestion), together with Prof. Victor Acosta and others.
• Other collaborations. With Zhifan Zhou (Paul Lett's group, formerly at Ron Folman's group) we demonstrated enhanced sensing using non-cyclic geometric phases, and with JJ Oon (formerly at Ron Walsworth's group) I worked out what happens at the breakdown of average Hamiltonian theory.

Quantum Information

My second line: the same control ideas applied to gates, and quantum state discrimination applied to security.

• Quantum gates. With dynamic population suppression (related to our dynamical elimination paper), a single operation produces a Rydberg phase gate (npj Quantum Information, 2026). With Ignacio Sola and Bo Y. Chang, we showed how to overcome Stark-shift constraints in phase-controlled Rydberg gates (Phys. Rev. A, 2026).
• Detecting quantum spoofing. Quantum states cannot be perfectly discriminated, and that makes spoofing detectable. If a radar encodes a random quantum state in its signal, a spoofer sending a false reflection must reproduce a state it cannot determine accurately. Considering coherent and squeezed states of light, we derived the optimal states and success probabilities and showed a quantum advantage: one is more likely to detect spoofing using quantum mechanics than without it. I proposed and co-advised this project as the M.S. thesis of Tomás P. Espinoza, a Universidad de Chile–ARL collaboration.

Quantum Control Methods

I develop the control techniques that the applications above rely on.

• Optimal control. Optimal quantum control theory deals with how to find pulses to steer a quantum system to a particular target state or to perform a specific gate. With Michael Goerz, we brought ideas from machine learning (automatic differentiation) into optimal control, extending the problems it can solve (Quantum, 2022). The code is part of the Julia framework QuantumControl.jl, and part of it is published as GRAPE.jl.
• Dynamical elimination. Specific experimental imperfections often require adapting known control schemes, and sometimes we must develop new techniques. To overcome the limitations of STIRAP in the low-pulse-area regime, we introduced dynamical elimination (the name is a mix of dynamical decoupling and adiabatic elimination of far-detuned states, and so is the idea). It gives a new, robust way of creating two-photon transitions, now also used for the gates above.
• Machine learning. I have applied machine learning—neural networks and reinforcement learning—in several works.

Earlier Work

Simple molecules. During my PhD, I worked with Prof. Ignacio Sola (Universidad Complutense de Madrid), modeling the H₂⁺ molecule fully quantum mechanically. We showed that it anti-aligns with electric fields when it is excited and dissociates, and later designed pulses to stabilize its excited state.

Complex systems. Before quantum control, I worked on how simple rules lead to emergent phenomena: from models of proto-living systems and soccer match outcomes to city traffic, where we showed that it's bad for city traffic if everyone follows the optimized route and found analogies between traffic and thermodynamics. More recently, I mentored Nikolas N. Encina (Universidad de Chile, undergrad) in using reinforcement learning to model the evacuation of agents from a room; the trained agents are more socially aware and avoid collisions significantly better.