Rate My Professor Marvin Weyland

Dr. Marvin Weyland is a Research Fellow in the Department of Physics, Sciences Division, at the University of Otago, where he has served since July 2021. He is a Postdoctoral Fellow affiliated with the Dodd-Walls Centre for Photonic and Quantum Technologies and works in Associate Professor Mikkel F. Andersen's Atomic Physics laboratory. Weyland earned his PhD from Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg in 2016, focusing on low-energy electron collisions. His doctoral thesis, completed at the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft in Heidelberg, examined electronic excitation of atoms and dissociation of molecules by low-energy electrons. Born in Magdeburg, Germany, Weyland conducted his PhD research from September to November 2016 in Quantum Dynamics and Control.

At the University of Otago, Weyland's research centers on ultracold atoms manipulated with optical tweezers to study quantum phenomena at the single-particle level. He spearheaded a landmark experiment observing individual atomic interactions: three rubidium-85 atoms were trapped and cooled to a millionth of a Kelvin in a vacuum chamber using focused laser beams. Merging the traps enabled direct measurement of collisional dynamics, including three-body recombination where two atoms formed a molecule, ejecting the third with unexpected kinetics. Surprisingly, molecule formation was over ten times slower than theoretical predictions, and a novel two-atom escape process was identified. This work was published as "Direct Measurements of Collisional Dynamics in Cold Atom Triads" in Physical Review Letters (124, 073401, 2020), with co-authors L. A. Reynolds, E. Schwartz, U. Ebling, J. Brand, and M. F. Andersen. Weyland stated, "Two atoms alone can't form a molecule, it takes at least three to do chemistry." His publications also include early works on electron impact: "An (e,2e + ion) study of low-energy electron-impact ionization of tetrahydrofuran" (Journal of Chemical Physics, 2014), "Novel method for state selective determination of electron impact ionization cross sections" (EPJ Techniques and Instrumentation, 2014), and "Dynamics of dissociative electron attachment to ammonia" (Physical Review A, 2016). Recent efforts feature "Spin-entanglement of an atomic pair through coupling to their thermal motion" (arXiv:2602.09327, 2024). These contributions enhance understanding of few-body physics, paving the way for atomic-scale quantum technologies.