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Physical Measurement Laboratory

Applied Physics Division

News and Updates

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NIST Ships First Programmable AC/DC 10-Volt Standard

October 26, 2010

Extending its 26-year tradition of innovative quantum voltage standards, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have begun...

NIST Researchers Create 'Quantum Cats' Made of Light

August 31, 2010

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have created "quantum cats" made of photons (particles of light), boosting prospects...

Colorized micrograph of the world's darkest material

Extreme Darkness: Carbon Nanotube Forest Covers NIST's Ultra-dark Detector

August 17, 2010

Harnessing darkness for practical use, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a laser power detector coated...

Nano 'Pin Art': NIST Arrays Are Step Toward Mass Production of Nanowires

July 21, 2010

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have cultivated many thousands of nanocrystals in what looks like a pinscreen or "pin...

Meet Phannie, NIST's Standard 'Phantom' for Calibrating MRI Machines

May 11, 2010

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)—a widely used medical tool that relies on magnetic fields and radio waves to visualize the body's internal structures...

Colorized micrograph of superconducting circuit

NIST Develops 'Dimmer Switch' for Superconducting Quantum Computing

April 27, 2010

Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed the first "dimmer switch" for a superconducting circuit linking a quantum...

NIST engineer Sae Woo Nam working on a photo detector

NIST Detector Counts Photons With 99 Percent Efficiency

April 13, 2010

Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed the world's most efficient single photon detector, which is able to count...

EEEL's New Optical Performance Monitoring of Polarization Impairment in Optical Fiber Communication, Oct 2009

October 22, 2009

High-performance optical fiber networks are susceptible to degradation effects that can change with time. An example of this is polarization-mode dispersion...

New NIST Method Reveals All You Need to Know About 'Waveforms'

October 6, 2009

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has unveiled a method for calibrating entire waveforms -- graphical shapes showing how electrical...

EEEL develops all-fiber photon pair Source with Record Low Noise and High Brightness

October 1, 2009

Researchers in the Optoelectronics Division of EEEL have demonstrated an all-fiber photon-pair source with the highest coincidence-to-accidental ratio (CAR)...

EEEL and USC Collaboration Applies Artificial Neural Networks to Optical Performance Monitoring

September 1, 2009

High-performance optical networks are susceptible to degrading effects that can change over time. Knowledge of the degradation can be used to diagnose the...

EEEL and ITL Researchers Develop New Uncertainty Analysis for Pulse Parameters

July 1, 2009

Oscilloscopes are routinely used to measure the properties of a wide variety of pulsed waveforms, including digital data streams in computers and in electrical...

NIST's LIDAR May Offer Peerless Precision in Remote Measurements

June 2, 2009

By combining the best of two different distance measurement approaches with a super-accurate technology called an optical frequency comb, researchers at the...

EEEL Measures High-Order Coherences of Chaotic and Coherent Light

June 1, 2009

Researchers in the Optoelectronics Division of EEEL, in collaboration with colleagues at MIT and MIT Lincoln Laboratory, have demonstrated a new way to measure...

New Nanotube Coating Enables Novel Laser Power Meter

May 5, 2009

The U.S. military can now calibrate high-power laser systems, such as those intended to defuse unexploded mines, more quickly and easily thanks to a novel...

Micrograph of a prototype NIST detector that will be used to seek B-mode polarization, the signature of the rapid inflation of the universe after the Big Bang.

NIST Super-Sensors to Measure 'Signature' of Inflationary Universe

May 4, 2009

BOULDER, Colo.—What happened in the first trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang? Super-sensitive microwave detectors, built...

Vibrationally Robust Fiber Laser Frequency Comb

April 1, 2009

Optical frequency combs have been vigorously developed over the past seven years at NIST and elsewhere. They provide a uniquely broadband and coherent optical...

Steady-state and time-resolved photoluminescence from relaxed and strained GaN nanowires grown by catalyst-free molecular-beam epitaxy

December 1, 2008

Gallium nitride (GaN)-based semiconductors have successfully been incorporated into commercial light emitting diodes and commercial laser diodes that operate...