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Volume 11, Number 1, January 2003. |
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In this issue.... |
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Upgrades to PEDL equipment are scheduled. Researchers within the Physics Department have funded an equipment upgrade for the Physics Engineering Design Laboratory. The final acquisition cost of the test-and-measurement suite will total about $9,000. The heart of the system is an Agilent 54622D Mixed Signal Oscilloscope. The budget-priced MSO is capable of acquiring 2 channels of analog data and 16 channels of time-synchronized digital data. This capability is currently unique in the T&M industry. The 33250A 80 MHz arbitrary waveform generator offers the ability to program any wave shape that can be described in 64,000 points. An example application would be the capture a signal on the MSO and then the ability to re-create that waveform on the 33250A over and over for trouble-shooting a circuit. The general purpose data acquisition and switch unit, an Agilent 34970A, will allow acquisition of 20 channels of up to 6 1/2 digit measurements of voltage, resistance, frequency and temperature data as well as digital and analog I/O for control applications. The T&M suite is rounded out with a digital triple DC power supply. All of the units are controllable over a GPIB bus, which will be accessible via USB thanks to a USB/GPIB converter that was part of the purchase. Software for the instruments is available at no cost over the web. The PEDL is planning to offer demonstrations of the equipment to familiarize the community with the capabilities of the equipment and it will be made available to Physics department labs for short-term loan. Ted Armstrong, a junior in Physics at MSU, joined the Cone/Sun group to carry out undergraduate research on fast coherent transient spectroscopy and related optical detector development with Tom Böttger. Mingzhen Tian is the organizer of a new Physics 400/500 undergraduate/graduate seminar on Quantum Computing Spring semester 2003 Randy Babbitt is chair of the program subcommittee for Holography, Wavemixing, Photorefractives, and Storage for the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics, Baltimore, MD, June 2003. He traveled to Washington D. C. for the program meeting in January 2003. Aleks Rebane, Rufus Cone, Randy Equall, and Randy Babbitt are co-chairs of the 8th international meeting of the conference on Spectral Holeburning, Single Molecules, and Related Spectroscopies 2003, Bozeman, MT, July 2003. Local Organizers include Bob Vrooman (Spectrum Lab), Yongchen Sun, Alan Craig, and Ralph Hutcheson. Tom Böttger visited the Physics Department at Westminster College in Salt Lake City, UT, and has been offered an Assistant Professor of Physics position on the faculty.
"Rare-earth based spectral memories: material implications," K. B. Hill and A. E. Craig, Invited presentation in Photonics West Technical Summary Digest, 2003 (SPIE, Bellingham, WA, 2003), Paper Number 4988-07. “Material Optimization of Er3+:Y2SiO5 at 1.5 mm for Optical Processing, Memory, and Laser Frequency Stabilization Applications,” Thomas Böttger, Y. Sun, C. W. Thiel, and R. L. Cone, Photonics West, Advanced Optical Data Storage, San Jose, CA, January 28, 2003. "Ion Scattering Studies of the Formation and Thermal Stability of the Ti-Al Interface", C.V. Ramana, B.S. Choi, R. Hutchison and R. J. Smith, "20th International Conference on Atomic Collisions in Solids" (ICACS-20) Jan. 19-24. "Using ion channeling to characterize the epitaxial growth of ultra thin films" C.V. Ramana, Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati, Jan. 28. "Defect Characterization for the Modification of Materials for Optoelectronics and Optical Communication Technologies", The Directorate for Engineering, NSF, $348,926, Galina Malovichko. "Space Weather Buoys: Low-Cost Constellation-Class Satellites Utilizing Commercial Parts and Subsystems", PI David Klumpar, Co-I Charles Kankelborg, $500,000, three years. "The Montana Satellite for Science, Engineering and Technology", PI David Klumpar, Co-I William Hiscock, $111,917, two years. “Electronic Structure of Lanthanide-Activated Optical Materials,” NSF, $299,414, Y. Sun and Charles Thiel. Aleks Rebane, Rufus Cone, and Randy Babbitt are co-PIs along with Kevin Wagner (lead-PI) and Jon Sauer of the University of Colorado on a proposal entitled “ Ultrahigh capacity multimode optical communications networks using spatial-spectral holography“ submitted to the NSF Information Technology Research program ($,3386,305 over five years)
Montana State University REU Site Program: A Materials Research Education, John Neumeier PI, Yves Idzerda Co-PI funded by NSF at $217,000 for summers '03-'05. Acquisition of an Optical Imager Furnace for Single Crystal Growth, Materials Research, and Education, Submitted to NSF Instrumentation for Materials Research Program on Jan 9th 2003. PI: John J. Neumeier $224,255. "Ytterbium YAG laser material characterization,", Scientific Materails, Y. Sun, $9738
“Clockwork cesium: Keeping time with atoms”, Dr. Elizabeth A. Donley, Time and Frequency Division, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Boulder, CO, Jan. 24. “Rocket Science in Montana”, Charles Kankelborg, Montana State University, Jan. 31. SeminarsCondensed Matter:
Rel/Astro
Seminar: "The gravitational signal of a chirping binary system in the output of LISA", Olivier Poujade, Jan. 30. C.V. Ramana traveled to India from Jan 13-Feb 7, giving a talk at his home university, and presenting a poster and a talk at the 20th International Conference on Atomic Collisions in Solids and Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati, India Dick Smith traveled to Cleveland, OH, to collaborate on research results with staff at NASA Glenn Research Center, Jan. 2-5. On Jan 8-9 Dick Smith traveled to Pacific Northwest National Lab in Richland WA with representatives from American Eagle, Inc (Missoula) and Arcomac Surface Engineering (Bozeman) to discuss potential applications of the filtered arc thin film deposition technology offered by Arcomac. Piet Martens participated in the Seattle AAS (Jan 6-9) and, "Strawman Concept for a Virtual Solar Observatory". Tom Böttger visited the Physics Department at Westminster College in Salt Lake City, UT, and has been offered an Assistant Professor of Physics position on the faculty. Tom Böttger traveled to San Jose, CA, for Photonics West 2003. He also visited IBM Almaden Research Center and the University of California at Berkeley. Larry Kirkpatrick attended the winter meeting of the AAPT in Austin, TX, Jan. 11-15. Jeff Adams attended a workshop at the AAS meeting held in Seattle, WA, Jan. 4-5. Bill Hiscock traveled to Seattle, WA, to attend an AAS meeting and participate in a review of NASA OSS E/PO proposals held at the Univ. of Washington, Jan. 5-10. Aleks Rebane attended a PQE Conference in Snowbird, UT, Jan. 5-10. Randy Babbitt attended a CLEO program committee meeting held in Washington, DC, Jan. 18-20. Jonathan Cirtain attended a MMM meeting held in Tampa, FL, Jan 11-18. Yves Idzerda participated in a Proposal Review Panel (PSP) meeting of the Advanced Light Source (ALS) in Berkeley, CA, Jan 9-11. On Jan. 17-23 he traveled to Salt Lake City, UT, to attend the PCSI Conference and an organizational meeting of PCSI. Aleks Rebane, Alan Craig, Kent Hill and Teijun Change attended the Photonics West Conference held in San Jose, CA, Jan. 26-30. Hugo Schmidt attended a workshop for DARPA PiezoCrystals held in Washington, DC, and a workshop on Fundamental Physics of Ferroelectrics in Williamsburg, VA, Jan. 28-Feb. 5. Patricia Jibben traveled to Palm Springs, CA, for Lab Automation 2003 Annual Conference and Exhibition, Jan. 31-Feb. 6. Recep Avci, Fernando Teran Arce, Robert Boyd, Brenda Spangler (Chem), Jennifer Wittmeyer and Mary Schweitzer attended and presented papers at the 5th Annual Linz Winter Workshop and learn AFM Tip Functionalization in Linz, Austria, Jan. 30-Feb. 8. Alan Craig traveled to Gaithersburg, MD, to attend NIST Buildings for Advanced Technology Workshop, Jan. 13-16. Dr. Roger Macfarlane visited the Cone/Sun group from January 19-31, 2003. "FAST observations of discrete electrostatic waves in association with downgoing ion beams in the auroral zone", Cattell, C., L. Johnson, R. Bergmann, D. Klumpar, C. Carlson, J. McFadden, R. Strangeway, E. Ergun, K. Sigsbee and R. Pfaff, J. Geophys. Res, 107(A9) doi: 10.1029/2001JA000254, 2002. "Temporal versus spatial interpretation of cusp ion structures observed by two spacecraft", Trattner, K. J., S.A. Fuselier, W.K. Peterson, M. Boehm, D. Klumpar, C.W. Carlson and T. K. Yeoman , J. Geophys. Res., 107(A10), doi: 10.1029/2001JA000181, 2002. “Progress in Relating Rare Earth Ion 4f and 5d Energy Levels to Host Bands in Optical Materials for Hole Burning, Quantum Information, and Phosphors,” C. W. Thiel, Y. Sun, and R. L. Cone, Journal of Modern Optics 49, 2399-2411 (2002). “Programmable Sub-kHz Laser Frequency Stabilization at 1523 nm using Persistent Spectral Hole Burning,” Thomas Böttger, G. J. Pryde, and R. L. Cone, Opt. Lett. 28, 200-202 (2003). L. Tsang, C. Sjaarda Cornish, and W. R. Babbitt, “Analytic Solutions of the Maxwell-Bloch Equations for High Photon Echo Efficiency of Multiple Pulse Sequences,” JOSA B 20, 379-390 (2003). M. Tian, R. Reibel, Z. Barber, J. Fischer, and W. R. Babbitt, “Observation of geometric phase using photon echoes,” Phys. Rev. A 67, 11403 (2003). "An analysis of the broadband ELF electric field activity associated with ion conic outflows in the nightside polar cap boundary region", J.W. Bonnell, C.C. Chaston, K.A. Lynch, R.E. Ergun, C.W. Carlson, R.J. Strangeway, J.P. McFadden, and D.M. Klumpar, submitted, Journal of Geophysical Research, Dec, 2002. "Ion Scattering Studies of the Formation and Thermal Stability of the Ti-Al Interface", C.V.Ramana, B. -S. Choi, R.Hutchison, and R.J.Smith, submitted to Nuclear Instruments and Methods B, January 2003. “Material Optimization of Er3+:Y2SiO5 at 1.5 mm for Optical Processing, Memory, and Laser Frequency Stabilization Applications,” Thomas Böttger, Y. Sun, C. W. Thiel, and R. L. Cone, SPIE Advanced Data Storage, Conference 4988, 2003. "Effects of low-energy He+ and Ar+ irradiation on Al(100) characterized by high-energy ion channeling", C.V. Ramana, B.-S. Choi, R. Hutchison, R.J. Smith, Presented at the 20th International Conference on Atomic Collisions in Solids, 19-24 Jan 2003, Puri(Orissa), India.
Gregory Reinemer successfully defended his Ph. D. on January 24, 2003. Thesis entitled, “Optical Characterization of Perturbed and C3i Sites in Rare-Earth Doped Oxides,” Congratulations Dr. Gregory Reinemer on your success! Randy Babbitt helped built and install a “bucket radio” exhibit in the Children’s Museum of Bozeman. A bucket radio demonstrates how the vibrations of a metal stud (driven by a radio) can be turned into sound by placing ordinary household items on the stud. Special thanks to Jerry Dimarco and John Getty/Kevin Rosen for donating surplus equipment and to Kayla Babbitt who helped repair the equipment and build and test the exhibit as her science fair project (January 2003). |
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Compiled & Edited by:Rose Waldon |
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