Welcome Nicholas Rapidis Postdoctoral Associate

Welcome to Nicholas Rapidis who comes to us from Stanford University as a postdoctoral associate working in the Konrad Lehnert group.

Rapidis comments on his research, “In my PhD at Stanford University, I worked in the DMRadio collaboration where I primarily focused on designs of future low-mass axion experiments, both by understanding their fundamental constraints and by implementing full-scale FEM simulations to extract their sensitivity. This work led to the “Core” geometry which informs the design of the DMRadio-Core experiment and the ultimate low-mass axion experiment: DMRadio-GUT. I was also involved in the design and commissioning of the DMRadio-50L experiment at Stanford University which uses dc SQUIDs, a superconducting LC resonator, and a toroidal magnet to search for dark matter axions. As an undergraduate at UC Berkeley, I worked with Karl van Bibber on the development and characterization of the microwave cavities used in the HAYSTAC experiment at Yale.
   
In the Lehnert group at Yale, my research primarily focuses on designing and implementing superconducting quantum devices for axion experiments. Such experiments tend to search for very weak electromagnetic excesses induced by dark matter axions interacting with dc magnetic fields. Since these experiments operate at cryogenic temperatures where thermal noise is suppressed, their sensitivity is often limited by quantum fluctuations, at a level set by the standard quantum limit (SQL). To date, squeezed states have been used to evade the SQL in the HAYSTAC experiment, but further enhancement beyond the SQL is a necessity to accelerate these searches. Designing such devices is my primary research focus.”

Rapidis continues, “I grew up in Athens, Greece, and, outside of physics, I particularly enjoy playing the piano, reading an assortment of 20th century fiction, learning about languages, and making baklava.”