Exploring the frontiers of quantum mechanics

Winter 2010JILA: LIght & MAtter

In the Beginning . . .

Artist’s conception of a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy. Fellow Mitch Begelman and Isaac

Shlosman of the University of Kentucky are developing a theory that not only explains how these massive structures formed in the early Universe, but also the origin of quasars.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Before there were galaxies with black holes in their centers, there were vast reservoirs of dark matter coupled to ordinary matter, mostly hydrogen gas. These reservoirs were sprinkled with the Universe’s early stars born in pregalactic dark matter halos. But according to Fellow Mitch Begelman, another population of atypical stars formed millions of years later during the creation of galaxies. These stars grew to truly colossal sizes — a million times more massive than the Sun. These Titans of the early Universe burned out in less than two million years, a blink of an eye in a Universe whose years now number nearly 14 billion. But in their short time, they sowed the seeds for the black holes that grew to power mighty quasars and became the behemoths that now reside at the center of every galaxy in the Universe.

Begelman and his colleague Isaac Shlosman of the University of Kentucky recently analyzed the rapid accumulation of gas needed to form these supermassive stars and discovered why the inflowing gas didn’t fragment into stars during the process. Rather, as gas was being funneled into the centers of massive

protogalaxies, it would stop flowing inward and form a disk that was violently unstable. In simulations done by other researchers, this disk did not fragment into stars. Instead, the rotating disk formed a bar, which reduced the turbulence and allowed the gas to resume falling in toward the center, where a single supermassive star was forming. Begelman and Shlosman suggested that it was the turbulence that inhibited other stars from forming. Every time the gas became unstable and grew turbulent (stopping the infall again), another bar formed. Every cycle of this “bars within bars” process funneled more gas into the center of the protogalaxies. Half the known galaxies in the Universe show evidence of this process.

The bars-within-bars process rapidly created dense, self-gravitating cores so optically thick, even photons couldn’t leave them.

Story continues on back cover

Not content with stepping on their bathroom scales each morning to watch the arrow spin round to find their weights, former research associate John Teufel and Fellow Konrad Lehnert decided to build a nifty system that could measure more diminutive forces of half an attoNewton (0.5 x 10-18 N). Their new system consists of a tiny oscillating mechanical wire embedded in a microwave cavity with an integrated microwave interferometer, two amplifiers (one of them virtually noiseless), and a signal detector. The system is so sensitive that at milliKelvin temperatures, it could weigh a cube of carbon atoms with 140 atoms on a side, or ~2.5 x 106 atoms. (According to Italian physicist Amedeo Avogadro (1776–1856), this cube should weigh about 5 x 10-17 grams.)

Of course, Teufel and Lehnert haven’t actually weighed any atom cubes yet. What they have done is measure the nanomechanical motion of a thin aluminum wire inside the microwave cavity with precision beyond that at the standard quantum limit, which is a limit on the minimum noise at quantum scales. Imprecision is one of two fundamental sources of noise, whose sum must exceed that standard limit.

The researchers managed to make a measurement with precision beyond that at the standard quantum limit by measuring the motion of the wire with the microwave interferometer built into the cavity housing the beam. This amazing interferometer operates near the shot noise limit, which is a measure of the inherent randomness from the microwave photons scattering off the wire during the measurement process. Since the interferometer operates at cryogenic temperatures, motion of the wire is fairly subdued. In fact, thanks in part to the reduced thermal motion of the wire at these low temperatures, it is an excellent force detector (with a sensitivity of 0.51 aN/√Hz).

Research associate Tobias Donner, graduate students Manuel Castellanos-Beltran and Jennifer Harlow, and new JILA Associate Fellow Cindy Regal provided valuable assistance in the creation of the new force detector. Regal and Teufel figured out how to tuck the nanomechanical wire inside the tiny resonant microwave cavity made of superconducting aluminum. Castellanos-Beltran worked with colleagues at NIST to design the tunable noiseless amplifier, a device that uses superfast switches sandwiched between layers of superconducting material. Teufel then put all the pieces together to make a measurement of nanomechanical motion that improved the group’s previous displacement imprecision by a factor of more than 28.

The Lehnert group’s new measurement system has opened the door to new experiments to probe the quantum nature of very small objects. The next step will be to use techniques analogous to laser cooling to cool the nanomechanical motion to its ground state. After that, the sky’s the limit: future experiments may one day include the creation of entanglement between mechanical motion and other quantum systems — or even tests of quantum theory itself.

Reference: J. D. Teufel, T. Donner, M. A. Castellanos-Beltran, J. W. Harlow, and K. W. Lehnert, Nature Nanotechnology 4, 820–823 (2009).

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False-color microscope images showing a freely suspended nanowire embedded in a resonant microwave cavity. The wire and cavity are made from superconducting aluminum. This arrangement enables ultraprecise measurements of nanomechanical motion at cryogenic temperatures.Credit: Greg Kuebler

The merger of supermassive black holes is a hot topic in astrophysics. Such mergers may occur after the formation of black hole binaries during galaxy collisions. The mergers are predicted to emit gravitational waves, whose detection is the mission of the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). In preparation for the LISA mission, which is scheduled for launch in 2018, Fellow Peter Bender is working with colleagues around the world to improve LISA’s design (see JILA Light & Matter, Summer 2006).

In the meantime, Fellow Phil Armitage wants to know whether black-hole mergers could also emit light (of any wavelength in the electromagnetic spectrum). If black-hole mergers do emit light just before or right after the black holes coalesce, then other space observatories might be able to scan for the mergers, too. Alternatively, if light emission due to mergers occurs, but is weak, other space observatories could focus their telescopes on newly coalesced black holes once they have been identified by LISA.

New simulations have recently given scientists a better understanding of the circumstances that could lead to emission of light during a black hole merger. The simulations were performed by former research associate Elena Rossi (now at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem), Armitage, and their colleagues at the Università degli Studi di Milano, the University of Leicester, and the UK’s Institute of Astronomy.

The simulations modeled the dissipation of both kinetic and potential energy in gas surrounding a merged black hole after it has recoiled in response to the emission of gravitational waves. In this work, the researchers assumed that a newborn supermassive black hole is surrounded by a thin disk of gas. Their simulations suggest that previous estimates of the efficiency of energy release were orders of magnitude too low. Paradoxically, however, the

predicted luminosity from disks around massive recoiling black holes appears to be far smaller than previously thought.

Here’s why: According to the simulations, the amount of light that would be emitted by “low-mass” merging black holes (with masses equal to 1 million suns) would be large only if three conditions were satisfied: (1) if the recoil velocity caused by the emission of gravitational waves during the merger is at least 1000 km/s; (2) if the recoil, or kick, occurs close to the plane of the disk

of gas surrounding the merging black hole, and (3) if the surrounding disk’s mass is large enough.

The third condition is the problem. The interaction of the disk with merging black holes probably does generate either X-rays or infrared light. But, at the large distances from the black hole where most of the light is emitted, a massive disk would likely fragment into stars that are almost unaffected by the merger. And a low-mass disk doesn’t add enough light to the total to create a flare that would be noticeable among the stars and galaxies.

The result is that merging black holes likely emit only relatively low-luminosity light. This “dim” light probably cannot be identified in a wide-area sky survey. However, once a merger

has been detected by LISA, other observatories should still be able to obtain valuable information by conducting follow-up studies of the light streaming out of the merger site.

Reference:Elena M. Rossi, G. Lodato, P. J. Armitage, J. E. Pringle and A. R. King, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, in press.

Simulation of gravitational radiation from the merger of two black holes. After the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) detects this radiation, other space observatories should be able to zero in on the merger and detect light radiating from it. The spherical shape in the center represents the horizon of the merged remnant, a supermassive black hole of 1 million solar masses.Credit: NASA Science Mission Directorate, Principal Investigator, James Van Meter

First LightNanomeasurement is a Matter of the Utmost Precision

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Heat does not always flow as rapidly near nanostructures as it typically does in solids. Instead, it can go ballistic! Ballistic heat transfer occurs near a tiny device if its size is smaller than the distance a phonon, or lattice vibration, travels before colliding with another phonon. When this happens, heat flow is reduced, and a nanoscale hot spot is created. Ballistic heat transfer away from a hot spot can be as much as three times less efficient than ordinary heat diffusion.

This new understanding of heat transfer comes compliments of former graduate student Mark Siemens (now a postdoc in the Cundiff group), graduate student Qing Li, Fellows Henry Kapteyn and Margaret Murnane, and their colleagues from CU’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, MIT, and Lawrence Berkeley Labs. Siemens led the JILA team that made the first observations and measurements of ballistic heat transport from nanostructures. His observations proved that nanoscale heat flow is slower than what is predicted by the simple diffusion of heat from a hot to a cold region, as first described by French mathematician and physicist Joseph Fourier in 1822.

In his experiments, Siemens first heated an array of nanowires with a femtosecond laser and then measured how fast the heat dissipated into two different materials, silica and sapphire. He observed ordinary heat diffusion through the silica where the distance between phonons was short, but ballistic heat transport through the sapphire where the distance between phonons was much longer. The two different kinds of heat transfer are shown in the figure.

In ballistic heat transport, the heat energy is carried away from the nanowires by

phonons that travel relatively long distances before colliding with another phonon. Ballistic transport makes it difficult to even define a temperature near the interface of the nanowires and the sapphire. This behavior leads to a thermal energy distribution that is different from what is predicted by the Fourier Law, which overestimates heat flow under these conditions. Siemens and his colleagues were able to correct the Fourier formula by including an additional term accounting for ballistic transport. Then they were able to quantitatively measure this value.

The Kapteyn/Murnane group expects its new understanding of ballistic heat transport will significantly impact heat management in future nanoscale devices. It could also play a role in thermal management in nanoelectronics, thermoelectric and photovoltaic energy conversion, nanomanufacturing, and nanoparticle-based heat therapies.

Reference: Mark Siemens, Qing Li, Ronggui Yang, Keith Nelson, Erik Anderson, Margaret Murnane, and Henry Kapteyn, Nature Materials 9, 26–30 (2010).

Stretched ThinFellow Ralph Jimenez is applying his knowledge of lasers, microscopy, and the precise control of tiny amounts of fluids to the development of a battery-powered blood analyzer for use “off-grid” in Third World countries. He is collaborating with Jeff Squier, David Marr, and their students from the Colorado School of Mines and Charles Eggleton and his student from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, to see if they can come up with a fast and accurate way to measure the elasticity, or stiffness, of individual red blood cells as they flow through an “optical lab on a chip.”

One trick to developing a useful medical device is finding a way to rapidly and accurately measure each cell’s ability to stretch and relax (i.e., the “spring constant”) for thousands of individual blood cells. Such measurements allow researchers to identify the cells and look for evidence of aging, cancer, or diseases such as malaria. They would enormously simplify the way blood analysis is done in the hematology analyzer instruments currently used in clinical laboratories.

As a first step in developing a blood analyzer, Jimenez and his colleagues have come up with a single-laser technique that can rapidly stretch and relax individual red blood cells as they flow through a tiny microfluidics chamber. For example, the red blood cell shown in the figure is (A) relaxed as it enters the microfluidics chamber, (B) stretched by the light from a diode laser, and (C) relaxed when the laser is turned off. The researchers are able to measure the deformation of this and other cells with respect to the angle of the laser beam and do the measurements hundreds of times faster than with techniques developed by others.

Jimenez and his colleagues have also created numerical simulations of this experiment to model the elastic response of

red blood cells to optical forces. The simulations verified not only that a single laser beam can induce cell stretching, but also that precise measurements of this deformation allow for the determination of the spring constant of individual cells. Taken together, the results of the simulations and the experiment suggest that the new laser-based screening method could become the foundation for the development of a new mechanical property-based cytometry (the counting and identification of cells with a specialized device).

Reference:Ihab Sraj, Justin Chichester, Erich Hoover, Ralph Jimenez, Jeff Squier, Charles D. Eggleton, and David W. M. Marr, Journal of Biomedical Optics, submitted.

Ballistic Evidence

JILA alum Kevin Silverman is a Staff Physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). NIST actually hired him a couple of years before he earned his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Colorado in 2002. From 1999 on, Silverman’s official advisor was Fellow Steve Cundiff. However, Silverman did most of his thesis research on the “optical properties of ultrafast semiconductor quantum dots” in Rich Mirin’s lab at NIST. This unusual arrangement marked the start of a fruitful NIST-JILA collaboration that endures to this day.

“When I started working in this lab,” Silverman said, showing off his fully equipped optics lab, “I was the only one in here. The lab was full of equipment, but I had to figure out something to do with all of it.” He wanted to study quantum dots, so he consulted with Mirin on the growth and processing of semiconductors and Cundiff on optics techniques. At NIST, he investigated the rate at which electron/hole pairs, or excitons, hop between quantum dots. At JILA in Cundiff’s lab, he explored the strength of the dipole moment in quantum dots.

Silverman and Mirin continue to work together closely; in fact,

Mirin is now Silverman’s group leader. And, both meet with Cundiff bimonthly. Their relationship set the stage for former JILA graduate student Ming Ming Feng to work with Silverman, who was doing basic research on bistable fast-switching and other properties of mode-locked–quantum-dot lasers. Feng, whose advisor was Cundiff, had the goal of building and characterizing a bright pulse quantum dot laser as part of his Ph.D. thesis work.

Newly minted Ph. D. Feng did in fact build and test a mode-locked quantum dot laser. The only hitch was that Feng’s new laser unexpectedly emitted a train of dark pulses, or dips in intensity. Undeterred, Feng has now signed on as a postdoc in Silverman’s lab where he continues his work on bright-pulse quantum-dot lasers. Two joint funding proposals submitted by Mirin, Cundiff, and Silverman provided support for Feng in his graduate studies as well as funding his postdoctoral position.

In addition to the collaboration with Cundiff at JILA, Silverman

says there are many advantages to working at NIST. As head of his own lab, he conducts basic research in the optical properties of semiconductors. He likes the fact that scientists at NIST usually spend more time in the lab than their university counterparts. On the other hand, there are fewer graduate students, but more post docs at NIST. At NIST, there is also somewhat less individual autonomy because everyone there is part of a group. There are a lot of pluses to working in a group, however, including the opportunity to share ideas and work with colleagues for extended periods of time. Plus, there are those great views of the Flatirons.

Silverman was originally lured to the West from Bucknell University, where he played Division 1 baseball, by the Rocky Mountains and CU’s reputation in physics. At CU, he met his wife Emily, a Ph.D. student in mathematics. She currently teaches math at Fairview. The couple has two children, ages four and six.

Sequence of red blood cells (A) relaxed as it enters the microfluidics chamber, (B) stretched by the light from a diode laser, and (C) relaxed when the laser is turned off. High laser powers can be used for rapid repeated measurements of the red blood cells, without damaging the cells.Credit: Greg Kuebler

ALUMNI PROFILE Kevin Silverman, NIST Physicist

Kevin SilvermanPhoto Credit: Greg Kuebler

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Experimental setup for measuring heat transport from laser-heated nanowires into silica (left) or sapphire (right). Heat carrier (phonon) collisions are shown for diffusive heat transfer into silica (left) and ballistic heat transfer into sapphire (right).Credit: Mark Siemens

A Quick and Nifty Way to Study Red Blood Cells

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Fellow Phil Armitage studies the migration of gas giant planets through evolving protoplanetary disks. He and former JILA postdoc Richard Alexander (Universiteit Leiden) have designed relatively simple models that reproduce the observed frequency and distribution of extra-solar giant planets, many of which orbit very close to their stars. The models also replicate the masses, lifetimes, and evolution of protoplanetary disks.

What’s new is that, in some cases, planet formation appears to be coupled to disk clearing. The addition of disk winds to the models results in this coupling, which has not been seen before in planet-formation models. Because of the disk wind, a giant planet migrating toward its star must continue to accrete dust and gas as it moves inward, while simultaneously allowing more gas to flow onto the star. Otherwise, it won’t be able to survive the migration process and end up on a stable orbit within ~1.5 AU (the distance between the Earth and the Sun). Since most of the giant extra-solar planets observed so far are in orbits of <1.5 AU, many planets clearly do accrete material as they move in across possible planetary orbits.

Interestingly, however, the models reveal that the accretion of material during migration does not explain the observed range of sizes for gas giant planets. Thus, the planet formation process itself is responsible for producing planets ranging in size from about a tenth the size of Jupiter to 10 times the size of Jupiter.

Regardless of their size, however, their ability to survive depends on timing. The new models indicate that the survival of gas giant planets depends on the timing of their formation with respect

to the stage in the protoplanetary disk’s evolution. To survive, planets that are Jupiter-sized or larger must form in the latter stages of disk evolution after the disk has begun to thin. Only about 10% of the modeled disks did form a giant planet toward the end of their lifetimes, which ranged from 2.3 to 10.7 million years in the models.

The models also showed that before protoplanetary disks disappeared, they formed two kinds of “transitional” disks. NASA’s Spitzer space telescope has detected many transitional disks, but astronomers do not know whether these are reliable signposts of massive planet formation. The models suggest that younger transition disks are more likely to have embedded planets, and the older disks are more likely to be in the process of being scoured away by powerful disk outflows.

Reference:Richard D. Alexander and Philip J. Armitage, The Astrophysical Journal 704, 989 (2009).

Carl Lineberger and his group recently achieved some exciting firsts: (1) the experimental observation of the oxyallyl diradical, a key intermediate in a series of important chemical reactions, and (2) the posting of an abstract of the Angewandte Chemie cover story reporting this achievement — on Facebook! While the Lineberger group is responsible for the clever design of the photoelectron spectroscopy experiments that led to the observation of oxyallyl diradical, Lineberger was astonished that his work got on Facebook. He speculated that the journal’s publisher, Wiley-VCH, was responsible. Wiley had also marketed the article with “refrigerator” magnets of the cover (shown here),

reprints of the article, high-resolution copies of the cover art (designed by JILA’s own Greg Kuebler), wall calendars, and notebooks with the cover art on the front. A follow-up discussion of the story appeared weeks after the article was first published in October 2009. Welcome to the new world of marketing for research publications.

Wiley couldn’t have picked a more interesting topic for its marketing blitz. For more than 50 years, the oxyallyl diradical has been postulated to be a key intermediate step in important organic chemical reactions. However, it hadn’t been observed until the Lineberger group’s negative ion experiments supplied the first direct evidence for its existence. The group’s photoelectron spectroscopy studies also provided detailed information on the molecule’s electronic states and geometrical structure.

The secret of the group’s “transition state spectroscopy” is quite ingenious. Before attempting to observe the very unstable states of oxyallyl diradical, the researchers added an electron to the molecule, creating a stable negative ion. Then after carefully setting up their spectroscopy experiment, they ripped off the extra electron, then quickly looked for and found the molecule that chemists have predicted for so many years. Perhaps that’s why the Angewandte Chemie’s Notes page on Facebook announced the findings to the world.

These findings included the observation that the lowest-energy (singlet) state of the elusive oxyallyl diradical is a very short-lived transition state that rapidly rearranges to form a three-carbon ring called cyclopropanone. All that has to happen for the ring to form is for the two hydrogen atoms attached to oxyallyl diradical’s two end carbons to rotate away from each other in opposite directions (away from the plane of the molecule). The width of this feature in the spectrum indicates that the lifetime of the ground state is only about 30 femtoseconds. This very short lifetime is the reason that conventional attempts to generate oxyallyl had failed. The negative ion methodology was absolutely essential to detect the oxyallyl singlet diradical and characterize its rapid conversion to cyclopropanone. The group is now busy preparing a follow-on paper describing their new transition spectroscopy method in detail.

Reference:Takatoshi Ichino, Stephanie M. Villano, Adam J. Gianola, Daniel J. Goebbert, Luis Velarde, Andrei Sanov, Stephen J. Blanksby, Xin Zhou, David A. Hrovat, Weston T. Borden, and W. Carl Lineberger, Angewandte Chemie Int. Ed. English 48, 8381 (2009).

Schematic energy landscape of the oxyallyl anion (lowest surface) and the two lowest states of the neutral oxyallyl diradical (middle and upper surfaces). Removal of the “extra” electron with a laser leaves the neutral diradical in either of these states, but at the equilibrium geometry of the anion. The lowest (ground) state is created at the saddle on the green surface. Molecular motion corresponding to “falling off of this ridge” leads to the ring-closed cyclopropanone in 30 femtoseconds. Energetically, the triplet state is found to be quite close to the molecule’s ground state.Credit: Greg Kuebler

The Great Migration

The race to measure the electron’s electric dipole moment (eEDM) is picking up speed across the world, thanks to graduate student Ed Meyer of JILA’s Lazy Bohn’s Ranch (i.e., John Bohn’s theory group). Meyer has identified more than a dozen horses, a.k.a. molecules and molecular ions, with strong enough internal electric fields to compete in the eEDM derby. Imperial College of London’s Ed Hinds is riding YbF (ytterbium fluoride) and leads by a nose. JILA Fellow Eric Cornell is counting on HfF+ (hafnium fluoride) to carry him across the finish line ahead of the rest. Yale’s Dave DeMille has teamed up with Harvard’s John Doyle to ride ThO (thorium oxide) to victory. And, the University of Michigan’s Aaron Leanhardt (formerly a postdoc with Cornell) is closing to within a length with WC (tungsten carbide).

Meyer has just identified what is surely the coldest horse that will ever compete in the eEDM derby: YbSr+. This ultracold yearling has some important advantages: (1) it may be relatively easy to make lots of it from ultracold atoms of Yb and Sr, (2) being colder may endow it with much longer coherence times at ultracold temperatures than the other “ordinary” eEDM candidate molecular ions, and (3) it could be made in the JILA basement.

In addition, YbSr+ doesn’t have any hyperfine structure. Hyperfine structure is a bad thing to have in the eEDM derby. It’s like having a horse with six left legs. Remove the hyperfine structure, which is due to nuclear spin, and your horse is back to normal and running on four legs. The only spin in this baby is the spin of the valence electron — and that’s the spin that matters.

The new ion is not without drawbacks, however. Its two constituent atoms are both heavy elements, meaning that the valence electron can hang out near either nucleus. Thus in an eEDM experiment, one could conceivably get twice the signal or no signal at all. However, Yb has a stronger pull on the electron than Sr, which reduces the chances of no signal. On the positive side, the ion has a nice short bond length, and at ultracold temperatures, it’s in its ground state. All this fine young stallion needs now is a willing jockey.

Reference:Edmund R. Meyer and John L. Bohn, Physical Review A 80, 042508 (2009).

The Coldest Horse in the Race

Artist’s Conception of a Protoplanetary Disk Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

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Oxidative Halogenation J. Iskra et al.Polymeric Janus Particles A. F. M. Kilbinger and F. WurmChemistry at Interfaces C. WöllSelenium Catalysts C. Santi, T. Wirth et al.

Radical ChangesRadical Changes

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Begelman has also studied the evolution of these cores, which were surrounded by stable envelopes that contained most of the the accumulated mass. The cores soon collapsed into black holes. Once the black hole appeared, the black hole and its surrounding gaseous envelope became a quasistar. Deep inside the massive quasistars, the black holes rapidly enlarged by sucking in matter from their bloated envelopes. The matter about to fall into the black holes released large amounts of energy, which puffed up the quasistars. However, the quasistars evaporated in relatively short order, leaving behind “seed” black holes with masses of a hundred thousand suns at the centers of billions of young galaxies.

The seed black holes were already mini-quasars, churning out light and radiation as they gorged on matter falling into them. As soon as the black holes grew to sizes between a million and

a billion suns, they became gigantic quasars visible from Earth. These monster quasars lit up the Universe for more than a billion years.

References: Mitchell C. Begelman and Isaac Shlosman, Astrophysical Journal Letters 702, L5–L8 (2009).

Mitchel C. Begelman, Elena M. Rossi, and Philip J. Armitage, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 387, 1649–1659 (2008).

Mitchell C. Begelman, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, published online December (2009) | doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2966.2009.15916.x

Steve Cundiff for being awarded the NIST Bronze Medal for his research on quantum dots. As part of a team including three colleagues from NIST-Boulder’s Optoelectronics Division, Cundiff made the first accurate direct measurements of the dipole moments of quantum dots and the first direct high-resolution measurement of the homogeneous linewidth of quantum dots; he also demonstrated mode-locked quantum dot lasers. The medal, which is the highest award granted by the NIST director, was presented to Cundiff at NIST headquarters in Gaithersburg on December 2, 2009.

Chris Greene for being awarded the 2010 Davisson-Germer Prize in Surface or Atomic Physics by the American Physical Society. Greene received $5,000 and was cited for “seminal contributions to theoretical AMO physics, including dissociative recombination, ultracold matter, and high-harmonic generation, and for the prediction of ‘trilobite’ long-range molecules.” The prize will be presented at the DAMOP annual meeting in May.

CU student Scott Hoch for winning an award for the best undergraduate presentation at the American Physical Society’s Four Corners Section. Hoch works with Konrad Lehnert.

Deborah Jin for winning Sigma Xi’s Proctor Prize, the international honor society’s top honor. The prize included a Steuben glass sculpture and $5000 as well as an additional $5000 research grant to a young researcher designated by Jin. Jin received the award in November 2009 at the society’s annual meeting.

David Nesbitt for receiving the 2009 Presidential Rank Award of Meritorius Senior Professional for exceptional scientific achievement. He received a cash award equal to 20 percent of his annual salary and a framed certificate signed by the President.

Kudos to...

JILA, University of Colorado 440 UCB Boulder, CO 80309-0440

http://jila.colorado.edu/

(303) 492-7861 sro@jila.colorado.edu

In the Beginning continued....