CAREER: Spectroscopic Test of Bose-Einstein Statistics for Photons/Teaching Modern Physics at Berkeley

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This CAREER activity concentrates on a scientific project that focuses on the search for a small violation of Bose-Einstein statistics for photons. This violation is manifest in the appearance of rare absorption events in a two-photon atomic transition. The particular transition chosen for the search is the absorption of two equal-frequency photons from the J=0 ground state to the J=1 state of ytterbium. It is estimated that this atomic-based test could provide a ten orders of magnitude better limit than the current upper limit of the Bose-Einstein statistics violation provided by the two-gamma decay of the Z-boson. The educational component of the proposal involves considerable contributions to the teaching of upper-level physics courses plus a cross-disciplinary activity that introduces graphical programming language elements in the upper division courses.