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Physics

Optical physics and communications

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First Light at NIST’s Spectroscopy Soft and Tender NSLS-II Beamlines

March 14, 2018

February 17, 2018 marked the culmination of ten years of planning and construction for NIST’s NSLS-II Spectroscopy Beamline Suite, with first light at the Soft...

A Stopwatch for Nanofluids: NIST Files Provisional Patent Application for Measuring Nanoliter Flow Rates

January 17, 2018

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has filed a provisional patent application for a microflow measurement system, about the size of a...

NIST Finds Many Protective Glasses Do Not Meet Specs for Shielding Light from Ultrafast Lasers

November 28, 2017

High-power, ultrafast pulsed lasers increasingly supply light for biomedical applications and imaging, materials processing, industrial micromachining and more...

Distant Exoplanets Revealed by Light from Wobbling Stars

October 16, 2017

Ask most folks what they would need to find planets orbiting distant stars, and very few will list a bottle of iodine. Yet that element plays a vital role in...

Cavity coating in flat red layer below blue-green light beam

Plasmons in an Open Box Create Miniature Laser

October 12, 2017

Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed the first miniature laser in which the light is guided along the floor of...

Driving the Universal Quantum Bus

September 12, 2017

NIST scientists have achieved a world record in detecting the intensity of an ultra-faint source of light, equaling the capabilities of the deep-space...

Image of a research platform that can report oceanographic and atmospheric data via satellite.

NIST Publishes 2016 Department of Commerce Laboratories Technology Transfer Report

September 11, 2017

GAITHERSBURG, Md.—The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has published the U.S. Commerce Department’s (DOC) 2016 Annual Report on Technology...

A NIST researcher holds a fixed length optical cavity (FLOC), a structure that enables highly accurate, quantum-based measurements of pressure.

NIST, Industry Partner Aim to Develop 'Quantum Pascal' Standard Into Real-World Device

September 6, 2017

In our everyday lives, pressure can mean a looming work deadline, a final exam, or bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth. In scientific terms, pressure is a...

Sub-microscopic LEDs Shed New Light on Advanced Materials

July 12, 2017

One of the persistent challenges in 21 st century metrology is the need to measure ever-more-detailed properties of ever-smaller things, from microchip features...

Cool It, Hot Rod: Improving Early Lasers

May 1, 2017

In the first decade after the invention of the laser one challenge to improving laser quality was the distortion of a laser’s rod due to absorption of heat...

Measuring Acceleration with Light

March 29, 2017

Most people have never seen an accelerometer -- a device that measures change in velocity -- and wouldn’t know where to look. Yet accelerometers have become...

1st North American Conference on Trapped Ions

March 20, 2017

The Ion Storage group at NIST Boulder will be holding a new Ion Trap Conference at our laboratory. The conference will be similar in scope and aims to the...

Light on the Rebound: ROSI Sees It from Every Angle

February 13, 2017

We see the world in reflection: Nearly all the light that enters our eyes has bounced off something first, bringing with it information about the nature of the...

Wearable ‘Watches’ to Monitor Your Blood Pressure

January 24, 2017

What if there were a wearable fitness device that could monitor your blood pressure continuously, 24 hours a day? Unfortunately, blood pressure (BP)...

Keeping a Sharp Eye on the Environment from Space

December 7, 2016

On Nov. 19, 2016, America’s most advanced weather satellite rocketed into orbit carrying six new, state-of-the-art instruments, dramatically enhanced...

Seeing Light’s Effect on Atoms — Within Picoseconds

November 16, 2016

For the first time in a laboratory setting, NIST scientists have made stop-action x-ray measurements of the way visible light interacts with atoms and molecules...

Screenshot of an animation of a superradiant laser

JILA’s Superradiant Laser May One Day Boost Atomic Clocks and ‘Rulers’ for Space

October 14, 2016

BOULDER, Colo. – JILA physicists have demonstrated a novel laser design based on synchronized emissions of light from the same type of atoms used in advanced...

Head to Head: Photonic Pressure Sensors vs. Mercury-Based Standard

April 21, 2016

When a team of researchers at NIST's Physical Measurement Laboratory (PML) first tested a new kind of pressure sensor two years ago, initial results showed it...

Optical Clocks Synched to Femtoseconds -- Through the Air

April 21, 2016

NIST researchers have devised a way to synchronize the time of two different clocks – separated by as much as 4 km of open, turbulent air – to within a few...

False-color scanning electron micrograph of a nanophotonic frequency converter

New Nanodevice Shifts Light's Color at Single-Photon Level

April 18, 2016

Converting a single photon from one color, or frequency, to another is an essential tool in quantum communication, which harnesses the subtle correlations...

Thinking Outside the Cuvette: To Measure Dimensions of Skinny Glass Container, PML Scientists Get Creative

February 1, 2016

Let's say you're a biotechnologist working to develop new medicines or a better test for forensic analysis. You might find yourself frequently using absorbance...

JILA instrument for accurately tracking microscopic objects such as DNA molecules

Ultra-stable JILA Microscopy Technique Tracks Tiny Objects for Hours

June 30, 2015

JILA researchers have designed a microscope instrument so stable that it can accurately measure the 3D movement of individual molecules over many hours—hundreds...

Photonic Thermometers: Out of the Lab, Into a Bucket of Water

April 28, 2015

A new class of tiny chip-based thermometers being developed by PML's Sensor Science Division has the potential to revolutionize the way temperature is gauged...

Novel Neutron Detector Makes Scintillating Debut

March 9, 2015

A team of researchers has successfully demonstrated a new design concept for a neutron detector that does not rely – as nearly all current models do – on a...

integrating sphere for light measurements

Following a New MAP for Solid-State Lighting

February 19, 2015

LED lights are notably cool. But as an industry sector, solid-state lighting (SSL) keeps heating up, with demand growing rapidly in residential, commercial, and...

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