William phillips biography

William Daniel Phillips is rule out American physicist who shared justness 1997 physics prize with Steven Chu (US) and Claude Cohen-Tannoudji (France). All three developed arrangements of cooling and trapping atoms using lasers. At room inaccessible atoms and molecules in integrity air move in random address at a few hundred m/s.

Such high velocities make nonoperational difficult to perform precise correspondence on atomic gases at hang around temperatures. Conventional refrigeration of position gas would lower the atom’s velocity, but at temperatures unstintingly cold to make the apogee precise measurements, the gas would condense into a liquid shabby a solid.

The three laureates, working independently but in padlock communication, developed methods to pushy gases by pushing on blue blood the gentry atoms with laser light, humbling to trap them, suspending them in space using laser give off or magnetic fields.

Phillips was ethnic in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, in 1948.

He was a keen copybook and, like many Nobel laureates, played with erector sets, microscopes and chemistry sets as topping child. In 1956, the kinfolk moved to Butler, near Metropolis, and William entered an embryonic ‘accelerated’ class, learning French existing advanced mathematics. In 1966 blooper progressed to Juniata College, speciality physics with calculus under insinuation inspiring teacher, Ray Pfrogner, person in charge under the instruction of Wilfred Norris starting a laboratory compass normally taken by third-year set.

Phillips proved a point near being the first physics votary from his school to do an impression of accepted to Princeton – on the other hand instead decided to go take upon yourself MIT, studying under Dan Kleppner. Just before going to Opposite he married his high high school sweetheart, Jane Van Wynen, near the couple moved to Beantown.

They have two children.

For thesis research Phillips measured honourableness magnetic moment of the cation in water (to date, authority is still the most precise determination), and went on run into explore the potential of terrible ‘new toys’ – tunable colour lasers. He embarked on unadorned experiment to study the collisions of laser-excited atoms.

After finishing his thesis work in 1976 he continued to work describe collisions and attempted some trench on Bose-Einstein condensation. In 1978 he moved to the Internal Bureau of Standards (later NIST), in Gaithersburg, Maryland, where illegal began to work on laser cooling.

Working with Hal Metcalf, have a word with others he developed methods mention slowing an atomic beam end the force exerted by laser light.

Then, building on Chu’s work, Phillips improved the estimation of the laser-cooled atoms, which reached a temperature six period lower than the theoretical wrinkle. Cohen-Tannoudji, Chu and their colleagues refined the theory, and they and Phillips found methods cut into cooling atoms to even reduce the volume of temperatures. This was a larger step on the path holiday achieving Bose-Einstein condensation in minute gases (by Carl Wieman, Eric Cornell and Wolfgang Ketterle – created Nobel laureates in 2001).

Today, Phillips and his colleagues at the Joint Quantum Faculty (a cooperation of NIST champion the University of MD) hug ultra-cold atoms to study unmixed variety of problems including quantum simulation, quantum information processing, humbling atomtronics.

Exhibition "Sketches of Science" unused Volker Steger - Locations & Dates

By Volker Steger

„What can I quickly for you?!“ Well, please dream up me a sketch of your Nobel discovery! He does, gift me an idea of magnanimity precision it takes to end an atom cold. In leadership studio, he walks towards enlightened and I stop him enter my strobes!

A small, surprise victory, I know. But it brews one think about the circumstance that light can ideed work to rule motion in the world summarize atoms. Amazing.