Deborah S.

Jin
Deborah Shiu-lan Jin (simplified Chinese: 金 秀 兰 ;
traditional Chinese: 金 秀 蘭 ; pinyin: Jīn Xiùlán; Deborah S. Jin
November 15, 1968 – September 15, 2016) was an 金秀兰
American physicist and fellow with the National
Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST);
Professor Adjunct, Department of Physics at the
University of Colorado; and a fellow of the JILA, a
NIST joint laboratory with the University of
Colorado.[1][2]

She was considered a pioneer in polar molecular

quantum chemistry.[3][4] From 1995 to 1997 she
worked with Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman at JILA,
where she was involved in some of the earliest studies
of dilute gas Bose-Einstein condensates.[5] In 2003, Dr.
Jin's team at JILA made the first fermionic condensate,
a new form of matter.[6] She used magnetic traps and
Born November 15, 1968
lasers to cool fermionic atomic gases to less than 100
Stanford, California, U.S.
billionths of a degree above zero, successfully
Died September 15, 2016 (aged 47)
demonstrating quantum degeneracy and the formation
Boulder, Colorado, U.S.
of a molecular Bose-Einstein condensate.[7][8] Jin was
frequently mentioned as a strong candidate for the Alma mater Princeton University (BA)
Nobel Prize in Physics.[9][10] In 2002, Discover University of Chicago (PhD)
magazine recognized her as one of the 50 most Known for fermionic condensate
important women in science.[11] Awards MacArthur Fellowship (2003)
Benjamin Franklin Medal (2008)
Isaac Newton Medal (2014)
Biography Scientific career
Fields Physics

Early life Institutions National Institute of Standards

and Technology
Jin was born in Santa Clara County, California,[12] Jin University of Colorado at Boulder
was one of three children, and grew up in Indian
Thesis Experimental study of the phase
Harbour Beach, Florida.[13] Her father was a physicist
diagrams of heavy fermion
and her mother a physicist working as an engineer.[13]
superconductors with multiple
Her father Ron Jin was born in Fuzhou in 1933 and
transitions ([Link]
passed away in 2010.[14]
[Link]/docview/30424757
4/) (1995)
Education Doctoral Thomas F. Rosenbaum
advisor
Jin graduated magna cum laude from Princeton Doctoral Brian L. DeMarco
University in 1990, receiving an Bachelor of Arts in students Cindy Regal
physics after completing a senior thesis titled "A Website Jin Group at Colorado ([Link]
Condensation-Pumped Dilution Refrigerator for Use in [Link]/jin/)
Cooling Millimeter Wave Bolometer
Detectors".[15][5][16] She was a recipient of the Allen G. Shenstone Prize in Physics in 1990.

Jin then studied at the University of Chicago, where she was a NSF Graduate Fellow from 1990 to 1993
and received a Ph.D. in physics in 1995, completing a doctoral thesis titled "Experimental Study of the
Phase Diagrams of Heavy Fermion Superconductors with Multiple Transitions" under the supervision of
Thomas Felix Rosenbaum.[17]

Scientific contributions
After completing her Ph.D., Jin joined Eric Cornell's group at JILA, the Joint Institute for Laboratory
Astrophysics in Boulder, Colorado, as a postdoctoral researcher. This change from condensed matter to
atomic physics required her to learn a new set of experimental techniques. Jin joined Cornell's group soon
after they achieved the first rubidium Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), and performed experiments
characterizing its properties.[18]

In 1997, Jin formed her own group at JILA. Within two years, she developed the ability to create the first
quantum degenerate gas of fermionic atoms. The work was motivated by earlier studies of BEC's and the
ability to cool a dilute gas of atoms to 1 μK. The weak interactions between particles in a BEC led to
interesting physics. It was theorized that fermionic atoms would form an analogous state at low enough
temperatures, with fermions pairing up in a phenomenon similar to the creation of Cooper pairs in
superconducting materials.[19]

The work was complicated by the fact that, unlike bosons, fermions cannot occupy the same quantum
state at the same time, due to the Pauli exclusion principle, and are therefore limited with regard to
cooling mechanisms. At low enough temperature evaporative cooling, an important technique used to
reach low enough temperature to create the first BEC's, is no longer effective for fermions. To circumvent
this issue, Jin and her team cooled potassium-40 atoms in two different magnetic sublevels. This enabled
atoms in different sublevels to collide with each other, restoring the efficacy of evaporative cooling.
Using this technique, Jin and her group were able to produce a degenerate Fermi gas at a temperature of
about 300 nK, or half the Fermi temperature of the mixture.[20][21]

In 2003, Jin and her team were the first to condense pairs of fermionic atoms. They directly observed a
molecular Bose-Einstein condensate created solely by adjusting the interaction strength in an ultracold
Fermi gas of atoms using a Feshbach resonance. She was able to observe transitions of the gas between a
Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) state and Bose-Einstein condensate.[22]

In 2008, Jin and her team developed a technique analogous to angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy
(ARPES) which allowed them to measure excitations of their degenerate gas with both energy- and
momentum-resolution. They used this approach to study the nature of fermion pairing across the BCS-
BEC crossover, the same system her group had first explored in 2003.[23] These experiments provided the
first experimental evidence of a pseudogap in the BCS-BEC crossover.[24]
Jin continued to advance the frontiers of ultracold science when she and her colleague, Jun Ye, managed
to cool polar molecules that possess a large electric dipole moment to ultracold temperatures, also in
2008. Rather than directly cool polar molecules, they created a gas of ultracold atoms and then
transformed them into dipolar molecules in a coherent way. This work led to novel insights regarding the
chemical reactions near absolute zero. They were able to observe and control potassium-rubidium (KRb)
molecules in the lowest energy state (ground state). They were even able to observe molecules colliding
and breaking and forming chemical bonds.[25] Jin's husband, John Bohn, who specialized in the theory of
ultracold atomic collisions, collaborated with her on this work.

Honors and awards

Jin was an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences (2005)[4] and Fellow of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences (2007).[26][27]

Jin won a number of prestigious awards, including:

2000, Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering[1]

2001, NIST Samuel W. Stratton Award
2002, Maria Goeppert-Mayer Award[5]
2002, National Academy of Sciences Award for Initiatives in Research
2003, MacArthur Fellowship "genius grant"[28]
2003, Arthur S. Flemming Award (Scientific Category)
2004, Service to America Medal: Science and the Environment
2004, Scientific American's "Research Leader of the Year"[29]
2005, American Physical Society, I.I. Rabi Prize
2006, Bonfils-Stanton Foundation Award in Science and Medicine
2008, The Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics[30]
2009, Sigma Xi, The William Proctor Prize for Scientific Achievement
2011, Gold Medal, NIST, Department of Commerce
2013, L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Award Laureate for North America[31][32]
2014, The Institute of Physics Isaac Newton Medal[33]
2014, Comstock Prize in Physics, "for a recent innovative discovery or investigation in
electricity, magnetism, or radiant energy."[4][7]
2014, “Most Influential Scientific Minds of 2014,” with Jun Ye, released from Thomson
Reuters
After her passing, the American Physical Society renamed its prestigious DAMOP graduate student prize
after Deborah Jin to acknowledge her impact in the field of atomic, molecular, and optical physics.[34]

Personal life
Jin married John Bohn, and had a daughter.[13] Jin died of cancer on September 15, 2016, in Boulder,
Colorado.[13][35]

References
1. "Deborah S. Jin" ([Link]
ulty/deborah-s-jin). JILA, University of Colorado. Archived from the original ([Link]
[Link]/faculty/deborah-s-jin) on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 3 December 2015.
2. "Interview with Deborah S. Jin" ([Link]
[Link]/courses/physics/scientist/transcripts/[Link]). Annenberg Learner. Annenberg
Foundation. Archived from the original ([Link]
scripts/[Link]) on 8 December 2015. Retrieved 3 December 2015.
3. DeMarco, Brian; Bohn, John; Cornell, Eric (October 2016). "Deborah S. Jin 1968–2016" (htt
ps://[Link]/10.1038%2F538318a). Nature. 538 (7625): 318. Bibcode:2016Natur.538..318D
([Link] doi:10.1038/538318a ([Link]
org/10.1038%2F538318a). PMID 27762370 ([Link]
S2CID 205091045 ([Link]
4. Ost, Laura (29 January 2014). "JILA/NIST Fellow Deborah Jin to Receive 2014 Comstock
Prize in Physics" ([Link] Nist. Retrieved
January 29, 2014.
5. "2002 Maria Goeppert Mayer Award Recipient Deborah S. Jin" ([Link]
ms/honors/prizes/[Link]?last_nm=Jin&first_nm=Deborah&year=2002). American
Physical Society. Retrieved 3 December 2015.
6. "A New Form of Matter: II, NASA-supported researchers have discovered a weird new
phase of matter called fermionic condensates" ([Link]
1/[Link] Science News.
Nasa Science. February 12, 2004. Archived from the original ([Link]
ce-news/science-at-nasa/2004/12feb_fermi/) on April 2, 2019. Retrieved July 12, 2017.
7. Galvin, Molly (January 16, 2014). "Academy Honors 15 for Major Contributions to Science"
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ia/news/[Link]). News from the National Academy of Sciences.
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nd-multimedia/news/[Link]) on 8 December 2015. Retrieved
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8. Regal, C. A.; Greiner, M.; Jin, D. S. (28 January 2004). "Observation of Resonance
Condensation of Fermionic Atom Pairs". Physical Review Letters. 92 (4): 040403.
arXiv:cond-mat/0401554 ([Link]
Bibcode:2004PhRvL..92d0403R ([Link]
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9. Chang, Kenneth (22 September 2016). "Deborah S. Jin Dies at 47; Physicist Studied Matter
in Extreme Cold" ([Link]
The New York Times.
10. Orzel, Chad. "Predicting The Nobel Prize In Physics" ([Link]
el/2015/10/02/predicting-the-nobel-prize-in-physics/). Forbes. Retrieved 2017-06-13.
11. Svitil, Kathy (13 November 2002). "The 50 Most Important Women in Science" ([Link]
[Link]/2002/nov/feat50/). Discover. Retrieved 21 December 2014.
12. "California Birth Index, 1905-1995" ([Link]
FamilySearch. Retrieved September 19, 2016.
13. Weil, Martin. "Deborah Jin, government physicist who won MacArthur 'genius' grant, dies at
47" ([Link]
cist-who-won-macarthur-genius-grant-dies-at-47/2016/09/20/c2deb8ce-7ed9-11e6-8d13-d7
c704ef9fd9_story.html). The Washington Post. Retrieved 2016-09-22.
14. "一盏过早熄灭的科学明灯 (A beacon of science that was extinguished too early)" ([Link]
[Link]/a/[Link]/a/114849144_116413). [Link]. 2016-09-22.
Retrieved 2022-05-28.
15. "Deborah S. Jin - CV" ([Link]
u/jin/sites/default/files/uploads/CV_Jin.pdf) (PDF). Archived from the original ([Link]
[Link]/jin/sites/default/files/uploads/CV_Jin.pdf) (PDF) on 2015-10-05.
16. Jin, Deborah S. (1990). A Condensation-Pumped Dilution Refrigerator for Use in Cooling
Millimeter Wave Bolometer Detectors ([Link]
Princeton, NJ: Department of Physics.
17. Jin, Deborah Shiu-lan (1995). Experimental study of the phase diagrams of heavy fermion
superconductors with multiple transitions (Ph.D.). The University of Chicago.
OCLC 833462117 ([Link] ProQuest 304247574 (http
s://[Link]/docview/304247574).
18. Chang, Kenneth (27 January 2017). "Lives: Deborah Jin '90" ([Link]
le/lives-deborah-jin-90). Princeton Alumni Weekly. Retrieved 26 July 2019.
19. DeMarco, B.; Jin, D. S. (1 December 1998). "Exploring a quantum degenerate gas of
fermionic atoms". Physical Review A. 58 (6): R4267–R4270. arXiv:cond-mat/9807406 (http
s://[Link]/abs/cond-mat/9807406). Bibcode:1998PhRvA..58.4267D ([Link]
[Link]/abs/1998PhRvA..58.4267D). doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.58.R4267 ([Link]
103%2FPhysRevA.58.R4267). S2CID 119413726 ([Link]
D:119413726).
20. "Fermion gas achieves quantum degeneracy". Physics World. 12 (10): 5. 5 April 1999.
doi:10.1088/2058-7058/12/10/2 ([Link]
2).
21. DeMarco, B.; Jin, D. S. (10 September 1999). "Onset of Fermi Degeneracy in a Trapped
Atomic Gas". Science. 285 (5434): 1703–1706. doi:10.1126/science.285.5434.1703 (https://
[Link]/10.1126%2Fscience.285.5434.1703). PMID 10481000 ([Link]
gov/10481000).
22. Greiner, Markus; Regal, Cindy A.; Jin, Deborah S. (2003). "Emergence of a molecular
Bose–Einstein condensate from a Fermi gas" ([Link] Nature.
426 (6966): 537–540. Bibcode:2003Natur.426..537G ([Link]
3Natur.426..537G). doi:10.1038/nature02199 ([Link]
PMID 14647340 ([Link] S2CID 4348155 ([Link]
[Link]/CorpusID:4348155).
23. Stewart, J. T.; Gaebler, J. P.; Jin, D. S. (August 2008). "Using photoemission spectroscopy
to probe a strongly interacting Fermi gas". Nature. 454 (7205): 744–747. arXiv:0805.0026 (h
ttps://[Link]/abs/0805.0026). Bibcode:2008Natur.454..744S ([Link]
u/abs/2008Natur.454..744S). doi:10.1038/nature07172 ([Link]
172). PMID 18685703 ([Link] S2CID 4309856 (http
s://[Link]/CorpusID:4309856).
24. Gaebler, J. P.; Stewart, J. T.; Drake, T. E.; Jin, D. S.; Perali, A.; Pieri, P.; Strinati, G. C. (4
July 2010). "Observation of pseudogap behaviour in a strongly interacting Fermi gas".
Nature Physics. 6 (8): 569–573. arXiv:1003.1147 ([Link]
Bibcode:2010NatPh...6..569G ([Link]
doi:10.1038/nphys1709 ([Link] S2CID 119294316 (https://
[Link]/CorpusID:119294316).
25. "Ultracold Molecules - Ye Group" ([Link]
s). [Link].
26. "Professor Deborah S. Jin" ([Link]
content/system/[Link]?s=Deborah+Jin). American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
Archived from the original ([Link]
+Jin) on 13 January 2016. Retrieved 3 December 2015.
27. "2007 Class of Fellows and Foreign Honorary Members by Class and Section" ([Link]
[Link]/web/20151208100720/[Link]
-[Link]) (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Archived from
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[Link]) (PDF) on 8 December 2015. Retrieved 3 December 2015.
28. "MacArthur Fellows / Meet the Class of 2003 Deborah Jin" ([Link]
s/710/). MacArthur Foundation. Retrieved 3 December 2015.
29. Holloway, Marguerite (2004). "Superhot among the Ultracool". Scientific American. 291
(September): 40–42. Bibcode:2004SciAm.291c..40H ([Link]
4SciAm.291c..40H). doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0904-40 ([Link]
ntificamerican0904-40). PMID 15376749 ([Link]
30. "Deborah Jin" ([Link] The Franklin Institute. 15 January
2014. Retrieved 2 December 2015.
31. Davidowitz, Suzie (October 22, 2012). "L'OREAL-UNESCO for Women in Science Names
Professor Deborah Jin 2013 Laureate for North America" ([Link]
s-release/loreal-unesco-women-science-names-professor-deborah-jin-2013-laureate-north-
[Link]). Market Wired. Retrieved 3 December 2015.
32. "Five exceptional women scientists receive L'OREAL-UNESCO Awards" ([Link]
ay/20160907200456/[Link]
[Link]). News Africa. 8 April
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33. "Institute of Physics announces 2014 award winners" ([Link]
9031247/[Link] Institute of Physics. Archived
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34. "Deborah Jin's Legacy Honored by DAMOP" ([Link]
ates/[Link]). [Link]. Retrieved 2017-06-13.
35. "Deborah Jin Dies at 47" ([Link]
edu/news/deborah-jin-dies-47). JILA. Archived from the original ([Link]
ws/deborah-jin-dies-47) on 19 September 2016. Retrieved 19 September 2016.

Further reading
Ni, Kang-Kuen; Greiner, Markus; Ospelkaus, Silke (31 January 2017). "Deborah S. Jin
1968–2016: Trailblazer of ultracold science" ([Link]
5293022). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 114 (5): 791–792.
Bibcode:2017PNAS..114..791N ([Link]
doi:10.1073/pnas.1619292114 ([Link]
 PMC 5293022 ([Link] PMID 28039435
([Link]

External links
Jin's CV at University of Colorado ([Link]
[Link]) Archived ([Link]
sites/default/files/uploads/CV_Jin.pdf) 2015-10-05 at the Wayback Machine
Jin group home page. ([Link] Archived ([Link]
eb/20150920002507/[Link] 2015-09-20 at the Wayback
Machine

Retrieved from "[Link]