Eugene, OR--A $510,500 grant from the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust will help scientists at the University of Oregon's Center for Optics in their quest to manipulate light and matter at the atomic level. The M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust was created by the will of the late Melvin J. (Jack) Murdock, a cofounder of Tektronix Inc. (Beaverton, OR).
The grant, coupled with a $600,000 investment by the university, will build and equip a research lab quiet enough and clean enough to allow researchers to probe and control the behavior of atoms, semiconductors, and nanometer-thick metal films.
The university's new Laboratory for Quantum Control, the first of its kind in Oregon, will enable the group to carry out original experiments at an internationally competitive level, says physics professor Michael Raymer. He and Andrew Marcus, associate professor of chemistry, are the new lab's principal investigators.
Raymer says quantum control is essential if the semiconductor industry is to keep up with the demand for increased capacity. According to Moore's Law, the capacity of chips to hold information doubles every 18 months. "We're already down to the level where quantum effects are in play," Raymer says. "Within three to five years, the size of each circuit element is going to be on the nanometer scale, where quantum effects begin to be important."
The new Laboratory for Quantum Control will be a part of the university's Oregon Center for Optics, which contributes to ONAMI, the Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute, a collaboration involving the University of Oregon, Oregon State University, Portland State University, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, the state of Oregon, and private industry.
The temperature-controlled laboratory will be equipped with two state-of-the-art laser systems allowing the University of Oregon scientists to probe into the structure and dynamics of matter and light. The researchers will control atoms and molecules by using ultrashort light pulses with durations down to 10 femtoseconds. Using insights from these studies, they hope to conduct research that leads to increased computer capability, improved optical-fiber communications, control of chemical reactions, and new forms of electronics.
Raymer, a founding member of the Oregon Center for Optics, specializes in quantum and classical optical phenomena. Marcus specializes in single molecule and ultrafast laser spectroscopy. Other faculty members who also will participate in the new facility include Tom Dyke, a chemistry professor; Miriam Deutsch, assistant professor of physics; Stephen Gregory, associate professor of physics; and Hailin Wang, associate professor of physics.
"This latest award reflects the Murdock Charitable Trust's commitment to helping the University of Oregon create world-class scientific instrumentation facilities," says Richard Linton, University of Oregon vice president for research and graduate studies.