Atomic Clocks and the 2012 Physics Nobel Prize
| What |
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|---|---|
| When |
Dec 22, 2012 from 10:30 am to 11:30 am |
| Where | Auditorium, HBCSE |
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Speaker: Prof. B. P. Das, Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore
Abstract:
The Nobel Prize in Physics this year was awarded to Serge Haroche and David Wineland for their ground breaking work on the manipulation and measurement of single quantum particles. Wineland's major contribution has been the development of atomic clocks using a single trapped and laser cooled ion. The talk will describe the important features of such clocks. The aluminium ion clock which was proposed a few years ago by Wineland's group at NIST Boulder, USA will be highlighted. Our group's theoretical work in establishing it as the world's most accurate clock will be touched upon.
About the Speaker
Bhanu Pratap Das graduated with B.Sc (Honours) in Physics from IIT Kharagpur in 1974. He received his M.S. in 1976 and PhD in 1981 from the State University of New York at Albany, USA.
Das was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Riverside and Max Planck Institute, Munich. He has held faculty positions at Colorado State University, Utah State University, Oxford University and IIT Bombay before joining the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), Bangalore as Professor in 1993. He is currently a Senior Professor and the Acting Director of IIA.
Das' primary research interest is in the interface of atomic and particle physics. His theoretical work on atomic parity violation in combination with the measurement of this phenomenon led to one of the first successful tests of the Standard Model of particle physics. His findings on time-reversal violations in atoms in recent years has provided new insights into physics beyond the Standard Model. His group has provided theoretical support to experimentalists at NIST, Boulder led by this year's physics Nobel Prize winner, David Wineland to establish the aluminium ion clock as the world's current most accurate clock. He has worked on the behaviour of matter at ultracold temperatures (billionth of a degree above absolute zero) and predicted the existence of of the supersolid state of matter. He is a Fellow of the Amercan Physical Society and was recently a Research Professor of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.
