Our Highlights from APS 2023

The APS March Meeting is the largest event in the calendar for physicists in the USA and across the world. This year, sixteen members of the Oxford Instruments team from four different business units, from as close as Nevada and California, to a little further afield from Oxford, travelled to Las Vegas, for a jam-packed week of presentations and industry updates. It’s always a joy to see our customers, partners and friends at events, to keep them up to date with all that’s new at Oxford Instruments and to watch the exciting evolution of the fast-paced industry that we all know and love!

Our booth this year featured the ProteoxMX and a Secondary Insert showcasing our HD coax solution, our collaboration on electrical transport measurements with Lake Shore, and a stunning representation of the latest addition to the Proteox family, the ProteoxQX! Joining the booth this year were other members of the Oxford Instruments family from Andor, Plasma and Asylum. Our experience of APS this year also featured lego, a lot of lego, but we’ll get to that…

1. The ProteoxQX model

A few years and many customer conversations later, it was fantastic to finally reveal an artistic representation of the ProteoxQX, a 60% scale model made up of 25 sheets of etched glass. It was really important to us to give as real a sense as possible of the actual system, so the designs etched on to the glass are the real CAD designs the build team is working against, the colour of the top of the model is the real colour of the top of the system and the access space is a proportional representation of just how much space the QX offers.

ProteoxQX

2. In Collaboration with Lake Shore

We are really proud of this collaboration and for all it promises over the coming months. At APS, we showed the first steps in the creation of our new measurement solution. This system has been designed to aid researchers in addressing experimental obstacles and enhancing their efficiency in conducting transport measurements. We can’t wait to see how researchers utilise the solution to boost productivity for their groundbreaking research.

Big thanks and kudos to the talented and dedicated team for developing the system, and a special thank you and well done to Abi Graham and Tony Matthews - I’m not sure two people have ever delivered so many demos in three days!

3. The ProteoxMX and Secondary Insert

It’s always a pleasure to be able to take our systems with us to events, and not just because they’re beautiful, although, of course we think they are! It also means we can easily discuss the physical aspects of the system, showing, for example, how to mount experimental components in the space or how to insert and remove the secondary insert. Having the systems on the booth always generates a lot of interesting conversations: on the one hand, they attract seasoned experts who want to understand what’s new in the world of dilution refrigerators; on the other hand, they entice people who have never worked with a fridge before to come over and chat to us about the work we do. Both kinds of conversations are equally rewarding!

This year, it was great to show the new high density coaxial wiring (HD coax) solution which allows users to scale their wiring while not compromising on the system’s accessible space. Users can incorporate more lines of semi rigid coax as they progress their research making use of the modularity of both the HD coax and the secondary insert.

4. APS: the cheese and wine edition

We had two prize givings accompanied by cheese and wine at this year’s March Meeting. It was a pleasure to congratulate Xiaomeng Liu from Princeton for his Lee Osheroff Richardson science prize win and travel grant winner Isabelle Phinney from Harvard in person. The second grant winner, Tom Werkmeister, couldn’t make it to the ceremony, but we want to offer our congratulations to him again as well!

On Wednesday evening, an ecosystem event saw many of our partners, suppliers and friends join us on the booth so that we could say thank you for being on this journey with us.

5. Quantum Takeover

The March Meeting this year was perhaps the most quantum-heavy we’ve ever seen. The Quantum Computing Report counted over 200 sessions devoted to quantum topics with roughly 3,000 separate presentations and out of more than 130 exhibitors, more than 50 of them are in the quantum ecosystem! It’s really exciting to see so many new quantum faces at the March Meeting every year. We’re really honoured to be a part of this community!

6. Poster presentation

Thanks to Hank Liu for delivering a presentation on experimental applications using Oxford Instruments’ superconducting magnets!

7. International Women's Day

The March Meeting fell over International Women’s Day this year and, at an event in an industry still largely dominated by men, it was great to see and speak to so many women who are excelling in their academic and professional careers.

8. Lego!

Our Oxford Instruments Lego scientists were a real hit! Anyone for an ‘Elf on the Shelf’ meets ‘Lego Physicist on Show Business’ collab? Ok, I know, it’s not exactly poetry, but you try rhyming physicist with…anything, it isn’t easy! See below for our physicists interrupting filming, getting involved in the Lake Shore experiment and wreaking havoc on the systems back home in Oxford…

We look forward to meeting you for the first time or the hundredth at the March Meeting in Minneapolis in 2024!