U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

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.

Physical Measurement Laboratory

Applied Physics Division

Our mission is to advance measurement science & technology in areas of critical importance to national priority needs, such as, advanced manufacturing, national security, quantum communications, strategic computing, and quantitative imaging. Photonics, magnetics, and imaging are transformative technologies where fundamental metrological basis is needed to address these national priority needs.

A grayscale scanning electron microscope image of a human hair with the letters N-I-S-T across it.
NIST Finds a Sweet New Way to Print Microchip Patterns on Curvy Surfaces
A woman wearing a mask stands over a yellow sphere at a lab bench.
NIST-Led Study Finds Variations in Quantitative MRI Scanners’ Measurements
Chilled superconducting nanowires
Detecting mid-infrared light, one photon at a time

The Division's key competencies include radiometry, advanced communications, sensing, quantum measurements, quantitative imaging, spectroscopy, and laser safety. In addition, the Division operates a state-of-the-art precision imaging facility to characterize unique devices that improve measurement science, standards, and services. Division staff include world experts in laser metrology, quantum metrology, quantitative imaging, as well as photonic and magnetic applications. The Division's focus on a targeted set of technical challenges enables us to maximize impact and benefit from collaborations with industry, government, and university stakeholders.

Press Coverage

Diagram shows a cellphone with a small plastic device attached that holds a strip of hydrogel close to the magnetometer inside the phone.

Smartphone compass used to measure glucose

Lab+Life Scientist
Researchers at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have used an ordinary smartphone’s built-in magnetometer, or compass, to measure

Taking Measure Blog

Krister Shalm, wearing safety glasses, smiles over a lab table covered with electronics equipment.

Quantum and Dance: It Takes 2 to Entangle

Quantum physics and dancing may seem very different, but they both rely on creativity and precision. Both have shaped one NIST researcher’s outlook on life.

News and Updates

Projects and Programs

Schematics and diffraction patterns

Aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy

Ongoing
As devices continue to become smaller, more complex, and more highly integrated, atomic scale measurements of their structure, chemistry, strain, and electric field are increasingly crucial for device design, reliability, and optimization. The aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron
Advanced Magnetic Imaging staff

Advanced Magnetic Imaging

Ongoing
Ultra-low field (ULF) MRI MRI systems are widely used for clinical diagnostics where imaging is typically done in high-field magnets ranging from 1.5 T to 7 T to achieve a manageable signal-to-noise ratio needed for short imaging times (few minutes) and high resolution (1 mm or less). Ultra-low
qim image

Advanced Microwave Photonics

Ongoing
NIST is home to a broad interdisciplinary program in quantum information science. NIST is exploring multiple implementations of qubits and strategies for taking advantage of quantum effects to compute, simulate, and improve fundamental measurement strategies. Josephson junctions are at the heart of

Software

JB95 Spectral fitting program

A graphical user interface program, JB95, based on a Windows 95 © API platform has been written in the C programming language to aid in the analysis of complex
hTron cell

SOEN Process Design Kits

This technology package, a.k.a process design kit (PDK), defines the NIST superconducting optoelectronics process: OLMAC. It is in the klayout format of

Tools and Instruments

THz photomixer spectrometer

Continuous-wave terahertz spectrometer

The continuous-wave terahertz spectrometer makes use of two near-infrared lasers. The first laser is a fixed-frequency cw ring Ti:Saph laser operating near 840

Awards

Patents

System And Mathod For Parameter Multiplexed Gradient Descent

NIST Inventors
Adam McCaughan , Sonia Buckley and Andrew Dienstfrey
Embodiments of the present invention relate to systems and model-free methods for perturbing neural network hardware parameters and measure the neural network response that are implemented natively within the neural network hardware and without requiring a knowledge of the internal structure of the

Magnetic Resonance Fingerprinting Thermometry

NIST Inventors
Kathryn Keenan and Megan Poorman
A method for temperature quantification using magnetic resonance fingerprinting (MRF) includes acquiring MRF data from a region of interest in a subject using an MRF pulse sequence with smoothly varying RF phase for MR resonant frequencies that is played out continuously. For each of a plurality of

Fiber-To-Chip Coupler

NIST Inventors
Saeed Khan
A fiber-to-chip coupler includes a substrate, a waveguide on a top surface of the substrate, an optical fiber axially aligned to the waveguide, and a cap. The waveguide has a uniform region with uniform width and a tapered-waveguide region having a width that adiabatically increases from a minimum

Contacts

Division Chief