Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

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

Quantum information science

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

Realizing Pressure, Temperature, and Length using Optical Interferometry

This project aims to fundamentally change the methods for realizing and disseminating the SI units of pressure, temperature, and length. The underlying

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