Mishkat Bhattacharya - Featured Faculty 2014

Sensors are ubiquitous in modern society, and are present in cell phones, computers, televisions, cars, ships, planes, and satellites, to name a few devices. These sensors are capable of detecting quantities such as position, speed, acceleration, rotation, radio signals, etc.

Fabrication techniques have advanced so much that several sensing technologies are now coming up against the limits posed to their ultimate sensitivities by quantum physics. In order to describe the sensor functioning accurately, these quantum limits need to be characterized precisely. Furthermore, it turns out that these limits can sometimes be circumvented by creatively using resources presented by quantum physics itself.

Bhattacharya's research, which is supported by the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, the Office of Naval Research, and the National Science Foundation, is focused on understanding a class of sensors which typically use a mechanically moving part as a detector, and an optical beam as a readout. A variety of systems fall under this category, including nanomembranes, micromirrors, and optically levitated particles. These elements can be used to make highly sensitive accelerometers, magnetometers, and thermometers, for example. Bhattacharya collaborates with several experimental groups that investigate such systems.

Bhattacharya’s work combines perspectives and techniques from physics, mathematics, chemistry and engineering, and involves undergraduate and graduate students, as well as postdoctoral researchers. He collaborates with faculty at RIT, locally in Rochester, nationally, as well as internationally. Currently his group is working on investigating the quantum limits to the detection of mechanical rotation, which is important to velocimetry, viscometry (the measurement of viscosity in a fluid), atomtronics (circuits made of moving atoms), and quantum information science.