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Physics

Overview

Physics research at NIST includes everything from improving the safety of medical radiation procedures to developing future "quantum information" technologies that generate unbreakable codes. NIST provides the measurements, standards, and technical expertise scientists and industries need to push the limits of the fundamental properties of nature.

Featured Content

SI Redefinition

NIST and the Nobel

Physical Reference Data

What Are Optical Lattices?

What Is an Optical Frequency Comb?

What Are Imaging Phantoms?

Physics Topics

Atomic / molecular / quantum

Optical physics and communications

Quantum information science

Key Accomplishments

Atomic clocks: NIST built the world’s first atomic clock, showing how to achieve the precise synchronization now critical to many modern technology systems, from GPS satellites for navigation to stock exchanges. NIST continues to operate atomic clocks, including the U.S. civilian time standard.
Frequency combs: NIST scientists developed the frequency comb, a “ruler of light” that made possible the latest atomic clocks, which may serve as future time standards. Frequency comb applications are also helping to find Earth-like planets, identify atmospheric chemicals and locate gas leaks.
Laser cooling: NIST physicists led the development and application of methods of cooling and trapping atoms with laser light, leading to the creation of new states of matter, advances in experimental quantum computing, and the awarding of three related Nobel Prizes to NIST physicists.

The Research

Projects & Programs

Yb Lattice Clock

Our Group is developing high stability, high accuracy optical atomic clocks based on thousands of Yb atoms confined to an optical lattice. Such clocks will find

Exposure Notification – protecting workplaces and vulnerable communities during a pandemic

The goal of this project is to utilize NIST expertise in privacy, cybersecurity, machine learning, wireless technology, ranging, modeling, and hardware and

Quantum Pascal: Fixed Length Optical Cavity (FLOC) Pressure Standards

This project is fundamentally changing the method for realizing and disseminating the SI unit of pressure, the pascale (Pa). The underlying principal behind

View All Projects/Programs

Additional Resources Links

Publications

The History and Future of Quantum Information

When two good things get together, they can create something even better. That’s the case with quantum information—the marriage of quantum physics and computing theory. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has contributed to much of its history and is helping to shape its future.

NIST physicist Elizabeth Donley and Compact Atomic Clock

Keeping Time at NIST

Einstein is reported to have once said that time is what a clock measures. Some say that what we experience as time is really our experience of the phenomenon of entropy, the second law of thermodynamics. Entropy, loosely explained, is the tendency for things to become disorganized. Hot coffee always goes cold. It never reheats itself. Eggs don’t unscramble themselves. Your room gets messy and you

A person wearing safety goggles works at a table of scientific equipment.

JILA’s Comb Breathalyzer Is Now a Thousandfold More Sensitive to Disease Biomarkers

A man in a white lab coat and black face mask (Jeffrey Herrera) stands near a wall of protective equipment like long gloves.

Spotlight: Jeffrey Herrera’s Journey Into Science and Safety

A woman wearing a face covering leans over a piece of scientific equipment, holding tweezers.