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

这个CAREER活动集中在一个科学项目上，该项目的重点是寻找光子对玻色-爱因斯坦统计的一个小违反。这种违背表现在双光子原子跃迁中罕见的吸收事件的出现。为研究选择的特殊跃迁是两个等频光子从J=0基态吸收到J=1状态的镱。据估计，这种基于原子的测试可以提供比目前由z -玻色子的2 - γ衰变提供的玻色-爱因斯坦统计违反的上限好10个数量级的限制。该提案的教育部分包括对高级物理课程的教学做出相当大的贡献，以及在高级课程中引入图形编程语言元素的跨学科活动。

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.