AION @ Imperial: Home

Imperial Ultracold Strontium Lab | Atom Interferometer Observatory and Network (AION)

This is the website for the Ultracold Strontium Lab at Imperial, which leads the UK’s AION collaboration (see our collaborators list).

We founded the Ultracold Strontium Lab and the Atom Interferometer Observatory and Network (AION) in 2021, driven by the goal to search for Ultra-Light Dark Matter and Gravitational Waves using clock-transition atom interferometry. In the lab we create interference between wave-packets of laser-cooled strontium atoms, split and recombined using the ultranarrow ¹S₀ to ³P₀ transition — the same transition used to build the world’s most precise atomic clocks. We plan to scale this technology to a larger facility, with atom interferometers separated by ≫ 100 m (e.g. the AICE facility), ultimately hoping to see small wobbles in the relative phase of the interferometers due to passing gravitational waves or dark matter fields (see Figure 1).

In 2026, we demonstrated the first prototype clock-transition atom-interferometer detector at the lab scale [Nature 654, 622–628 (2026)]. Since then, we have demonstrated a record-high-flux source of cold strontium atoms [AVS Quantum Sci. 8, 033201 (2026)]. We are currently working towards Large Momentum Transfer (LMT), cavity-based squeezing, and continuous ultracold-atom sources – three techniques to improve the sensitivity of the detector.

Data from the Imperial prototype atom interferometer, showing correlated elliptical data from two interferometers — Figure 1: Data from the Imperial prototype atom interferometer, reproduced from Nature 654, 622–628 (2026). The data from the two interferometers is highly correlated, forming a clean ellipse even in the presence of noise on the interferometry laser — i.e. the High Laser Noise (HLN) data makes the same ellipse as the Low Laser Noise (LLN) data. In a full-scale instrument, we hope to see dark matter and gravitational waves as subtle periodic distortions in the shape of this ellipse, shown in panel d.

News

October 04, 2026

Welcome Thomas and Nora!
With the start of the new academic year, we welcome Thomas Accattatis who will be joining us as a new PhD student and Nora Malgeri who will be conducting the research phase of her Masters in Physics here at Imperial in the Ultracold Strontium Lab!
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August 01, 2026

Goodbye Charles!
It is with much sadness that we announce the departure of Dr. Charles Baynham from the AION experiment and the Ultracold Strontium Lab at Imperial. He will be heading to IonQ where he will help lead the effort to develop trapped-ion based quantum computers.
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July 01, 2026

New UROP students Leo and Xander
We are happy to include Leo Bessonov and Xander Cooke to our group as the latest UROP students. Leo rejoins us from the UROP project he did with us last year and we welcome Xander from Oxford where the two of them will be researching how to use ARTIQ to control a spatial light modulator to control laser beams for the purposes of neutral atom quantum computation or other exciting applications!
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June 08, 2026

Differential clock interferometry in the Imperial AION system
We are proud to present our latest work, just published in Nature, demonstrating noise rejection in a differential atom interferometer using the strontium-87 clock transition. This is an important step towards the long-baseline atom interferometer AION needs to search for gravitational waves and dark matter, validating the principle of laser noise rejection between two separated interferometers.
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June 03, 2026

Elizabeth Pasatembou Graduated!
We are super proud of our very first PhD graduate, Dr. Elizabeth Pasatembou, who has graduated from her degree and is now working in quantum key distribution in Cyprus. Well done Elizabeth!
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June 01, 2026

The Bait with Adelaide Aronio
We were lucky enough to work with the amazing artist Adelaide Aronio who has produce a series of art works and a murial inspired by our search for dark matter. Visit her website to see more beautiful examples.
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March 31, 2025

ARTIQ training 2025
Another year, another ARTIQ training course! This year we hosted a fantastic group of 24 quantum researchers coming from Birmingham, Cambridge, Kings College London, Oxford, the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Durham, the National Quantum Computing Centre, and the National Physical Laboratory. The course was in-person at Imperial College where we programmed two Sinara systems live and learnt the concepts of quantum control with ARTIQ.
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February 28, 2024

PhD opening in the AION group
We have a funded position for a PhD student starting in 2024 to join the AION group at Imperial!
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Older posts…

Research

Ultra-precise, shock-resistant optical clocks

Learn about the USOC project to develop ultra-precise, shock-resistant optical clocks using a continuous stream of ultracold strontium atoms in a moving optical lattice

The vision for AION

Read about our latest work on clock-transition atom interferomtry, published in Nature

The vision for AION

Learn more about the core vision of AION: a 4-stage project aiming to build gravitaional wave and dark matter detectors at the km-scale using cutting-edge techniques from quantum science.