Postdoctoral Fellow (PREP0003525) Johns Hopkins University

Salary: $75,000-$83,000 a year

PREP Research Associate

This position is part of the National Institute of Standards (NIST) Professional Research Experience (PREP) program. NIST recognizes that its research staff may wish to collaborate with researchers at academic institutions on specific projects of mutual interest, thus requires that such institutions must be the recipient of a PREP award. The PREP program requires staff from a wide range of backgrounds to work on scientific research in many areas. Employees in this position will perform technical work that underpins the scientific research of the collaboration.

Research Title:

Deployable Doppler Broadening Thermometry

The work will entail:

Researcher will develop next-generation deployable, calibration-free Doppler thermometers. The Doppler broadening of spectral lines relates gas temperature to SI-defining physical constants and immutable gas properties, allowing primary thermometry. Achieving the size, accuracy, and measurement speed sufficient for thermometry in industrial applications requires new approaches to absorption spectroscopy. First, to reduce the size, the project will use microfabricated atomic vapor cells. Second, the project will incorporate narrow linewidth lasers from optical frequency metrology to refine knowledge of atomic properties, allowing atomic Doppler thermometry with unprecedented accuracy. Third, the project will employ tunable electro-optic frequency combs to boost measurement speed. The researcher will integrate these three technologies to yield a portable Doppler thermometer with a sensor size comparable to a standard thermometer, but with the advantage that it never has to be calibrated.

Key responsibilities will include but are not limited to:

• Setup and maintain optical setups for frequency and intensity locking lasers against spectroscopy cells, high-finesse optical cavities, and other lasers.
• Characterize laser frequency noise.
• Participate in the design and construction of vapor cell mounts and thermometer sensor heads.
• Design, test, and implement compact fiber coupling methods for microfabricated vapor cells in collaboration with other groups at NIST.
• Participate in data analysis and modelling efforts.
• Program automated data collection systems and integrate analysis for automatic temperature readout.
• Disseminating project results via peer-reviewed publications and public presentations.

Qualifications

A Ph.D. in Physics or a related field.

A Experience in one or more of the following:

o Frequency stabilization of laser systems.

o Atomic or molecular spectroscopy.

o Optical frequency metrology.

o Electro-optic frequency combs.

o Temperature metrology using platinum resistance thermometers.

o Python programming.

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PREP is a 5-year cooperative agreement between NIST laboratories and participating PREP Universities to establish a collaborative research relationship between NIST and U.S. institutions of higher education in the following disciplines including (but may not be limited to) biochemistry, biological sciences, chemistry, computer science, engineering, electronics, materials science, mathematics, nanoscale science, neutron science, physical science, physics, and statistics. This collection of information is needed to facilitate administrative functions of the PREP Program.

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