BREAD Collaboration Workshop

14 Jan 2026, 08:30 → 16 Jan 2026, 19:00 US/Eastern

Harvard University

We are excited to host the next BREAD collaboration workshop at Harvard University in January!

Start: Wednesday, January 14, 9am
End: Friday, January 16, 2026, afternoon

Location: 
Harvard University Physics Department 
Jefferson Lab 256

Social Events: 
We will have a social dinner on the first day in Jefferson 450 and go ice skating on the second day, see details below.

In-Person Attendance:

Arrival:

We will have breakfast every day ready from 8:30am in the physics department  (https://maps.app.goo.gl/NayN5Z3y9NQujcDY6). The department is a short walk from Hotel Veritas. Once you are in front of the building, please enter through the leftmost door on the South side of the building, marked on this image:

The other doors will be locked for security purposes.

If you have any issues, please call Morgan (630) 544-9214, Seth at (617)495-9169 or me at (630) 362-1065.

 

Events:

• Lab Tours Signup
   
• Ice Skating Signup

 

Speakers:

Please see Zoom information below to project your slides.

Note that the time noted on Indico is the time for your talk including questions and discussion. Please allow at least 5 minutes for questions. Our schedule ended up rather full, so we will be more strict in adhering to time limits.

If you wish any adjustments, please feel free to let us know.

 

Posters:

We are looking forward to a few posters people are bringing along. If you want to bring your own and haven’t told us yet, please send Set <seth_lewis@fas.harvard.edu> a quick heads up, so we can arrange enough poster boards.  

 

WiFi:

If you have eduroam you should be all set, otherwise please follow the instructions at https://getonline.harvard.edu

 

Remote Attendance and Zoom:

We will use the following Zoom room:

https://harvard.zoom.us/j/98505467370?pwd=vFehVs2MbbkVX4cDWC2l6qSwnTssd2.1

 

Presentations will be recorded. If you would like to opt out of recording, please just let us know and we will turn recording off.

 

 

Wednesday, 14 January

08:30 → 09:00 Breakfast

09:00 → 09:45 Welcome and Theory

09:00 Welcome and Logistics

Speaker: Stefan Knirck (Harvard University)

welcome-info.pdf

09:15 A Theory Perspective on Axions

Speaker: Prof. Matt Reece

09:45 → 11:55 GigaBREAD and GHz Detection

Convener: Morgan Lynn (UChicago / Harvard)

09:45 GigaBREAD Overview

Speaker: Maja Benning (TUM / MPP / Harvard)

10:05 Reflector Mechanical Design and Fridge Integration

Speaker: Alex Buzzi (Harvard)

10:30 Coffee

10:50 KI-TWPAs

Speaker: Dr Corwin Shiu

11:15 J-TWPAs

Speaker: Jennifer Wang (MIT)

11:40 Discussion Time

12:00 → 13:00 Lunch

Boxed Lunches Provided

13:00 → 15:10 QualityBREAD, SlicedBREAD and mm-wave amplifiers

Convener: Dr Andrew Sonnenschein (Fermilab)

13:00 QualityBREAD - Simulations, and W-Band Receiver

Speaker: Gabe Hoshino (UChicago)

13:25 SlicedBREAD - Idea and Sensitivity

Speaker: I-see Jaidee (Harvard)

13:45 SlicedBREAD - First Measurements

Speaker: Grant McIntyre (Harvard)

14:05 Dielectric Material Characterization with mm-wave Fabry Perot Cavities

Speaker: Brodi Elwood (Harvard)

14:30 Dielectric Stack Diplexers and SIS Detectors

Speakers: Dr Edward Tong (Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian) , Keara Carter (Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian)

14:55 Discussion

15:10 → 15:35 Coffee

15:35 → 16:00 Other Axion Searches

Convener: Prof. David Miller (UChicago)

15:35 Fermilab Axion Cavity Experiment with JPA / transmon qbit

Speaker: Morgan Lynn (UChicago / Harvard)

16:00 → 16:50 Towards a Large-Scale BREAD program

Convener: Prof. David Miller (UChicago)

16:00 Requirements for an Ultimate Axion Search w/ BREAD

Speaker: Stefan Knirck (Harvard University)

knirck_bread_requirements_compressed.pdf

16:20 Magnet & Facility Options

Speaker: Dr Andrew Sonnenschein (Fermilab)

16:40 Discussion

17:00 → 18:00 Lab Tours: Group 1

17:00 → 18:00 PI Discussions

18:00 → 19:55 Dinner & Posters

Harvard Physics Library

Thursday, 15 January

08:30 → 09:00 Breakfast

09:00 → 09:25 Other Axion Searches

09:00 MADMAX - Update and Single Photon Detection Plans

Speaker: Juan Maldonado (Max Planck Institute for Physics)

09:25 → 09:55 Other Physics Targets for BREAD

Convener: Stefan Knirck (Harvard University)

09:25 Other Physics Targets for BREAD (Broadband, Timing, Directionality)

Speaker: Gabe Hoshino (UChicago)

09:45 Discussion

09:55 → 12:10 TeraBREAD and THz Sensing

Convener: Stefan Knirck (Harvard University)

09:55 Transition Edge Sensors

Speaker: Dr Rita Sonka (NASA Goddard (Karwan's group))

10:20 Coffee

10:40 Dark Photon Search with KIDs

Speaker: Dr Ritoban Basu Thakur (JPL)

11:05 Cold-Electron Bolometers for broadband sub-cm wave single photon counting (~60GHz)

Speaker: Prof. Karthik Ramanathan (Washington University in St. Louis)

11:30 Josephson Photonics Devices for BREAD

Josephson photonics refers to the physics of Josephson junctions biased at a DC voltage V below the superconducting gap, interacting with electromagnetic radiation. In this regime, Cooper pairs tunnel inelastically through the junction, exchanging their potential energy 2eV with the electromagnetic environment in the form of photons. Because the junction has no inductance in this voltage state, Josephson photonics devices are not limited by the plasma frequency that constrains most Josephson junction technologies to about 30 GHz. This opens the door to much higher operational frequencies.

We are developing two Josephson photonics devices that could be useful for BREAD:

1. Inelastic Cooper Pair Tunneling Amplifier (ICTA), a linear, quantum-limited amplifier [1]. I will present our latest progress in extending ICTA bandwidth to an octave [2] and discuss our roadmap toward ICTAs operating in the W-band (75 to 110 GHz).

2. Photon-Number Amplifier, a device multipling the photon number in an incoming mode into n photons in an outgoing mode [3]. Ideally, this process adds no photon noise, enabling detection far below the standard quantum limit. I will share recent experimental results and describe two readout strategies: time-resolved photon counting [4] and spectral resolution.

[1] Near-quantum-limited amplification from inelastic Cooper-pair tunnelling, S. Jebari, F. Blanchet, A. Grimm, D. Hazra, R. Albert, P. Joyez, D. Vion, D. Estève, F. Portier, M. Hofheinz, Nat Electron 1, 223-227.

[2] DC-powered broadband quantum-limited microwave amplifier, N. Nehra, N. Bourlet, A. H. Esmaeili, B. Monge, F. Cyrenne-Bergeron, A. Paquette, M. Arabmohammadi, A. Rogalle, Y. Lapointe, and M. Hofheinz, to appear on arXiv.

[3] Microwave Photon-Number Amplification, R. Albert, J. Griesmar, F. Blanchet, U. Martel, N. Bourlet, M. Hofheinz, Phys. Rev. X 14, 011011 .

[4] Amplification and Detection of Single Itinerant Microwave Photons, L. Danner, M. Hofheinz, N. Bourlet, C. Padurariu, J. Ankerhold, B. Kubala, arXiv:2510.08030v1.

Speakers: Prof. Max Hofheinz (Université de Sherbrooke) , Dr Nicolas Bourlet (Université de Sherbrooke)

11:55 Discussion

12:10 → 12:20 Group Photo

12:10 → 13:10 Lunch

Boxed Lunches Provided

12:25 → 13:10 Lab Tours: Group 2

13:10 → 14:10 Lab Tours: Group 3

13:10 → 14:10 PI Discussions

14:10 → 16:30 TeraBREAD and THz Sensing

Convener: Morgan Lynn (UChicago / Harvard)

14:10 SQuAT (Superconducting Quasiparticle-Amplifying Transmons)

Speaker: Dr Alexander Droster (Stanford University/SLAC)

14:35 WIXARD (WIdeband graphene-based aXion dARk matter quantum Detector) for BREAD and MADMAX

Speaker: Prof. Kin Chung Fong (Northeastern University)

14:55 Designing a Graphene Microwave single photon detector

Speaker: Prof. Ethan Arnault (Syracuse University)

15:15 Coffee

15:25 Single Electrons in a Penning Trap as a meV Single Photon Counter for BREAD

Speaker: Prof. Xing Fan (Harvard)

15:50 Axion Dark Matter Detection with Axion Quasiparticles

Speaker: Prof. Suyang Xu (Harvard)

16:15 Discussion

16:25 → 20:35 Ice Skating

Kendall Square (Skate Canal District)

Friday, 16 January

08:30 → 09:00 Breakfast

09:00 → 09:20 Other Physics Targets for BREAD

09:00 Polarized Dark Photon Analysis of GigaBREAD Data

Speaker: Jialin Yu

09:20 → 10:40 InfraBREAD and Infrared

Convener: Dr Andrew Sonnenschein (Fermilab)

09:20 InfraBREAD - Reflector & SNSPD Chcaracterization

Speaker: Dr Christina Wang (Fermilab)

09:50 Sub-IR SNSPDs

Speaker: Dip Joti Paul (MIT)

10:15 Powder Haloscope (remote)

Speaker: Prof. Masha Baryakhtar (University of Washington)

10:40 → 11:00 Coffee

11:00 → 12:25 TeraBREAD and THz Sensing: Beyond Sensing

Convener: Stefan Knirck (Harvard University)

11:00 Photomixer R&D

Speaker: Dr Emily Perry (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) )

11:20 Vibration Mitigation R&D

Speaker: Dr Noah Kurinsky (SLAC)

11:40 Fourier Transform Spectrometer Options

Speaker: Dr Ritoban Basu Thakur (JPL)

12:05 Discussion - Options for Frequency Resolution in BREAD

12:25 → 12:40 Closeout

Speakers: Dr Andrew Sonnenschein (Fermilab) , Stefan Knirck (Harvard University)

12:40 → 13:40 Lab Tours: Group 4

12:40 → 14:20 Lunch (individual)

14:00 → 18:00 Time for Individual Activites / Meetings

14:20 → 15:50 Student Session: R&D Forum: Grounding, Vibration, ...