Chandra Raman - School of Physics, Georgia Tech

Abstract: Atomic sensors—devices that utilize individual atoms as the sensing mechanism—offer enormous prospects for high sensitivity, accuracy and immunity to environmental noise.  This is because such sensors leverage quantum mechanical properties of the atom such as internal energy level splittings that do not change with time and are immune to sensor fabrication errors.  While some of these sensors are now commercially available, they are still bulky instruments that must be individually assembled by hand and will not be widely disseminated in their current form.  Recently we have developed a novel platform for the realization of on-chip atomic devices with applicability to realizing new wafer-scale atomic clocks, gyroscopes and other sensors.  In this talk I will discuss how we realize such devices in the laboratory, and what the prospects are for realizing the dream of co-integrating precision atomic and electronic sensing instruments.

Bio: Dr. Chandra Raman is Associate Professor in the School of Physics at Georgia Tech where he performs both fundamental and applied research on atomic systems and devices. His group uncovered new properties of quantized vortices, spin textures and quantum phase transitions in ultracold Bose-Einstein condensates, work for which he was awarded Fellowship in the American Physical Society in 2013. From 2013-15 he took a leave of absence to work in industry realizing prototype atomic inertial sensors, work which he has translated into his laboratory today. He has two patent applications in the area of atomic devices and instrumentation. He is a current reviewer for Physical Review Letters and Physical Review A, and has served on the Organizing Committee for CLEO/QELS (Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics/Quantum Electronics and Laser Science) as well as the DAMOP (Division of Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics) Ph.D. Thesis Prize Selection Committee.