The department of Physics & Astronomy is pleased to welcome Professor Steve Chu .

Professor Steve Chu is presently The Director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Professor of Physics and Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California at Berkeley, has a distinguished career in research. He received his Ph.D in physics from Berkeley in 1976, spent 1978-87 at the AT&T Bell Laboratories as Head of the Quantum Electronics Department, and 1987-2007 as Theodore and Francis Gabelle Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Stanford University, before accepting his present appointments at Berkeley. In 1997 Chu shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Cohen-Tannoudji of France and William Phillips of U.S. for his pioneering work on cooling trapped atoms by laser beams and creating what is called 'optical molasses'. The technique has led to devices to study fundamental problems in physics and cellular biology with unprecedented precision.

Steve Chu is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He has received numerous awards and honorary degrees. At Stanford he helped start Bio-X, a multi-disciplinary initiative linking physical and biological sciences with engineering and medicine. He is the co-chair of the International InterAcademy Council study, "Transitioning to Sustainable Energy". The IAC represents over 90 national academies of science around the world.

Professor Chu will be a guest of the department April 30th through May 2nd and will present a series of lectures entitled:

Reception in F235 after the Lecture

This lecture will focus on two aspects of the coherent control and use of laser cooled atoms: ultra-high precision atom interferometry and strongly correlated, rotating Bose-condensates. Recent progress in the further development of atom interferometry that can be used in precision measurements such as inertial sensing, measurements of fundamental constants and tests of general relativity. An atom interferometer where the beam splitter consists of high order optical Bragg scattering (up to 20 photons momenta) that will be used to measure the Fine Structure Constant by measuring the 2 kHz photon recoil frequency shift of a cesium atom to an absolute accuracy of 2 micro Hertz.

In the second half of the talk, our studies of rotating Bose gases will be presented. The correlated motion of rotating atoms are directly analogous to the Fractional Quantum Hall effects of 2-D electrons in a magnetic field in that both systems exhibit a new quantum ground state where a motionally-correlated ground state that arises from single particle degeneracy. I will discuss how an adiabatic transition is being used to create this new angular momentum ground state for micro-Bose Condensates.

4:00 PM *

Technological Institute, Room L211

2145 Sheridan Road, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208

Coffee will be served in L211 prior to the Lecture.

Among the world's most serious concerns are national security, which is tied to energy security, economic prosperity, and the social, and the potentially dire risks of climate change. At the core of these problems is need for sustainable creation and consumption of energy. Government policies are needed to accelerate the deployment of energy efficiencies and conservation and stimulate the innovation of new technologies. We also need new scientific discoveries that can transform the entire landscape of energy demand and supply. After briefly describing aspects of the energy problem, the remainder of the talk will describe some areas of research that may lead to transformative technologies.