Richard Hobson

Dr Richard Hobson is an Advanced Research Fellow in the Department of Physics at Imperial College London’s Faculty of Natural Sciences, affiliated with the High Energy Physics Group and Physics Research Fellows. His work focuses on cold-atom quantum technologies, including the development of squeezed atom interferometers as part of the Atom Interferometer Observatory and Network (AION), and the Ultra-precise Shock-resistant Optical Clocks (USOC) initiative. He leads efforts to create continuous streams of ultracold strontium atoms for quantum sensors.

• Core team member of AION since 2019, aiming to detect dark matter and gravitational waves.
• Developed strontium atomic clocks during his PhD at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), improving accuracy and enabling constraints on beyond-the-Standard-Model physics.
• Pioneered cavity-based quantum non-destructive detection and the first metastable magneto-optical trap for strontium.

His research seeks to bridge observational gaps in gravitational wave detection between NanoGrav and LIGO, with potential to observe primordial cosmic phenomena.