Abstract:

Recent development in atomic clocks have included the chip-scale atomic clock that can be manufactured by mass production techniques and brings the prospect of every GPS receiver having its own on-board atomic clock and thereby considerably increasing its performance. Inspired by this approach, this talk discuss routes to making magneto-optic traps of cold atoms that can be made by micro fabrication techniques - in particular the talk will concentrate on micro fabricated diffraction gratings for producing the configuration of multiple laser beams required for trapping. A magneto-optical trap of cold atoms with temperatures down to 50-60 micro-Kelvin has been made using these gratings and the cold atoms can be used to further increase the accuracy of atomic clocks.

Bio:
Prof. Charlie Ironside has recently moved to the Applied Physics Department, Curtin University, in Perth, Western Australia. Previously, he was professor of quantum electronics in the School of Engineering of the University of Glasgow. His research work has covered a large range of optoelectronic topics including nonlinear optics, quantum cascade lasers, modelocked semiconductor laser diodes, optoelectronic integrated circuits, chip-scale atomic trapping and low noise optoelectronic oscillators. He has published over 250  papers.  In 2012, he won an award, Scottish Best Knowledge Transfer Partnership Award, for transferring his research work to industry.

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