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(PhysOrg.com) -- If there is life on other planets, a laser frequency comb developed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) may help find it.

During the week of February 6-10, 2012, some extremely weighty matters were in progress at NIST’s non-magnetic facility, where PML researchers hosted an international gravimeter shoot-out with potentially momentous consequences for the impending redefinition of the kilogram.

For climatologists and environmental policy makers who need to determine the flux of greenhouse gases (GHG), there are three paramount questions: Where is it, how much is there, and how is it moving? A new measurement approach is being developed and tested by a PML research team and NIST colleagues that may provide answers of unprecedented accuracy to all three.

Researchers from the NIST Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology have made a grating coupler that transmits over 45 % of the incident optical energy from a plane wave into a single surface plasmon polariton (SPP) mode propagating on a flat gold surface, an order-of-magnitude increase over any SPP grating coupler reported to date.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers from the NIST Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology and Purdue University have designed and fabricated an on-chip microresonator that converts continuous laser light into ultra-short pulses consisting of a mix of well-defined frequencies, a technology with applications in advanced sensors, communications systems, and metrology.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers from the NIST Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology and the University of British Columbia have shown that the interaction between a light pulse and a light-absorbing object, including the momentum transfer and resulting movement of the object, can be calculated for any positive index of refraction using a few, well-established physical principles combined with a new model for mass transfer from light to matter.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers from the NIST Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology and the University of British Columbia have shown that the interaction between a light pulse and a light-absorbing object, including the momentum transfer and resulting movement of the object, can be calculated for any positive index of refraction using a few, well-established physical principles combined with a new model for mass transfer from light to matter.

(PhysOrg.com) -- A team of researchers from the NIST Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology and FEI Company have adapted a commercial focused ion beam (FIB) column to use photoionized laser-cooled lithium atoms as an ion source, and demonstrated that NIST’s patented Magneto-Optical Trap Ion Source (MOTIS) offers imaging performance competitive with the liquid metal ion sources used in most FIBs.

(PhysOrg.com) -- By measuring the motion of a vibrating, porous membrane separating water and air, researchers from the NIST Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology, the NIST Physical Measurement Laboratory, the University of Maryland, and Boston University have revealed a new regime of fluid behavior near solid surfaces that has not been previously observed.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers from the NIST Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology have led the development of a new technique for efficiently out-coupling photons from epitaxially-grown quantum dots directly into a standard single-mode optical fiber.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and University of Colorado Boulder (CU) have developed a low-power microchip that uses a combination of microfluidics and magnetic switches to trap and transport magnetic beads. The novel transport chip may have applications in biotechnology and medical diagnostics.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Thanks to advances in experimental design, physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have achieved a record-low probability of error in quantum information processing with a single quantum bit (qubit)—the first published error rate small enough to meet theoretical requirements for building viable quantum computers.

The electromagnetic force has gotten a little stronger, gravity a little weaker, and the size of the smallest "quantum" of energy is now known a little better. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has posted the latest internationally recommended values of the fundamental constants of nature.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have created a tunable superconducting circuit on a chip that can place a single microwave photon (particle of light) in two frequencies, or colors, at the same time.

By combining advanced laser technologies in a new way, physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have generated microwave signals that are more pure and stable than those from conventional electronic sources. The apparatus could improve signal stability and resolution in radar, communications and navigation systems, and certain types of atomic clocks.