MRI: Acquisition of a Femtosecond Frequency Comb for Fundamental Precision Measurements

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The project involves acquisition of a femtosecond frequency-comb system and associated equipment that will constitute a shared experimental facility for precision fundamental measurements in atomic, molecular, and optical (AMO) physics at UC Berkeley. The facility will provide Berkeley researchers with a set of reference frequencies, known to the precision of the best atomic clocks, throughout the optical spectrum - an extremely powerful tool, which has been recognized by the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physics. The research made possible by the Facility includes testing the constancy of the fundamental 'constants' of nature, atom interferometry to explore the physics beyond the standard model and gravity, trapped ions for quantum information processing and quantum computing, a trapped-ion frequency standard to be shared between all users via the facility, ultracold molecules which are the natural extension of the ultracold-atom revolution of the 1990s, and massively parallel data communication via the millions of frequencies within a comb. The intellectual merit of the project is in that it will enable researchers to take advantage of a window of tremendous opportunity in terms of cutting-edge science in the area of inquiry that has been an inexhaustible source of discovery ever since the advent of the first atomic clocks over half a century ago. The broader impacts will be in that the Comb Facility will become an instrument for training scores of graduate and undergraduate students and post-doctoral scholars; in fostering International collaboration; in outreach to K-12 students and the public, and in fostering cross-disciplinary connections, for example, those between AMO physics on the one hand and cosmology, chemistry, nuclear physics, and materials science on the other.