David E. Pritchard

David E. Pritchard (born October 15, 1941 in New York City ) is an American physicist . The professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a pioneer in atomic optics and the atomic interferometer .

life and work

Pritchard studied at Caltech with a bachelor's degree in 1962 and received his doctorate in 1968 from Harvard University under Daniel Kleppner . From 1968 he was at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , where he received a full professorship in physics in the Research Laboratory for Electronics (RLE) in 1970. Since 2001 he has been the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics there. From 2003 to 2006 he was one of the two associate directors of the RLE under director Jeffrey H. Shapiro, succeeding Daniel Kleppner.

In the 1980s, he invented the magnetic trap and the magneto-optic trap for cooling and trapping atoms. He withdrew from the research area in the early 1990s to leave the field to Wolfgang Ketterle , whom he brought to MIT as a post-doctoral student and who became professor there. Ketterle further developed atomic cooling and in 1995 achieved the Bose-Einstein condensation for the first time , a discovery for which he studied physics in 2001 together with Eric Cornell (who was a student of Pritchard) and Carl E. Wieman from JILA in Boulder (USA). Received Nobel Prize .

Since the 1980s, his research group has been using atom traps to build mass spectrometers (single ion mass spectrometry) that hold the worldwide record for accuracy (0.1 ppb ).

He is a pioneer in the development of atomic interferometers. They demonstrated atomic interferometers in 1991 with sodium atoms and microfabricated diffraction gratings. He and his colleagues developed a microfabricated diffraction grating for atoms as early as 1988. Also in 1988, he demonstrated Bragg reflection of atoms on a standing light wave. With this work he was one of the founders of the research field of atom optics.

Pritchard developed a computer-based system for teaching physics at MIT (CyberTutor).

He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences (1999), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , the American Association for the Advancement of Science , the Optical Society of America, and the American Physical Society (APS). In 1991 he received the Herbert P. Broida Prize of the APS, in 2003 the Arthur L. Schawlow Prize for Laser Physics and in 2004 the Max Born Award .

In 1992, he co-chaired a conference at MIT with psychiatrist John E. Mack on the phenomenon of alien abduction , where he gave two lectures on Factual Evidence and Abduction and The Terrestrial Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

Publications

• Atom Optics. In: Jens C. Zorn & Robert R. Lewis (Eds.): Atomic Physics 12th Twelfth International Conference on Atomic Physics, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1990. American Institute of Physics, 1991, ISBN 0883188112 , pp. 165-170
• with Andrea Pritchard, John E. Mack , Pam Kasey & Claudia Yapp (Eds.): Alien Discussions. Proceedings of the Abduction Study Conference held at MIT, Cambridge, MA. North Cambridge Press, 1995
  • Alien Discussions / Abducted by aliens. Research reports and discussion contributions to the conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, on the abduction phenomenon. Zweiausendeins, Frankfurt 1996, ISBN 3-86150-174-0
• with MS Chapman, TD Hammond, DA Kokorowski, A. Lenef, RA Rubenstein, ET Smith & J. Schmiedmayer: Atom interferometers and atomic coherence. In: Advances in Physics . Volume 46, 1998, doi : 10.1002 / (SICI) 1521-3978 (199811) 46: 6/8 <801 :: AID-PROP801> 3.0.CO; 2-P , pp. 801-808
• with Carl E. Wieman & David J. Wineland : Atom Cooling, Trapping, and Quantum Manipulation. In: Reviews of Modern Physics. Vol. 71, Issue 2, 1999, DOI: 10.1103 / RevModPhys.71.S253 , pp. S253-S262 ( PDF; 312 kB )
• with A. Cronin, S. Gupta & DA Kokorowski: Atom optics: old ideas, current technology and new results. In: Annals of Physics . Volume 10, 2001, doi : 10.1002 / 1521-3889 (200102) 10: 1/2 <35 :: AID-ANDP35> 3.0.CO; 2-Z , pp. 35-54
• with Alexander D. Cronin & Jörg Schmiedmayer : Optics and Interferometry with Atoms and Molecules. In: Reviews of Modern Physics. Vol. 81, Issue 3, 2009, DOI: 10.1103 / RevModPhys.81.1051 , pp. 1051–1129 ( preprint on arXiv )

literature

• CDB Bryan : Postconference Interview: David E. Pritchard, Ph.D. In: Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind: A Reporter's Notebook on Alien Abduction, UFOs, and the Conference at MIT Penguin Books, 1996, ISBN 0140195270 , pp. 231-236
  • UFO files. Close encounters of the fourth kind. Alien abductions. Goldmann, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-442-12748-3

Web links

• David E. Pritchard on the MIT website
• David E. Pritchard. In: Physics History Network. American Institute of Physics

Footnotes

1. ^ RLE at MIT: David E. Pritchard Appointed Associate Director of RLE . July 1, 2003
2. ^ David E. Pritchard: Cooling neutral atoms in a magnetic trap for precision spectroscopy. In: Physical Review Letters . Vol. 51, Issue 15, 1983, DOI: 10.1103 / PhysRevLett.51.1336 , pp. 1336-1339
3. ^ EL Raab, M. Prentiss, Alex Cable, Steven Chu & DE Pritchard: Trapping of neutral sodium atoms with radiation pressure. In: Physical Review Letters . Vol. 59, Issue 23, DOI: 10.1103 / PhysRevLett.59.2631 , 1987, pp. 2631-2634
4. ↑ MIT ICR Lab: Recent News ( Memento of the original from April 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
5. ↑ MIT researchers compare atomic masses with unprecedented accuracy . In: MIT News. December 19, 2003
6. ^ Simon Rainville, James K. Thompson & David E. Pritchard: An Ion Balance for Ultra-High-Precision Atomic Mass Measurements. In: Science . Vol. 303, no. 5656, January 16, 2004, DOI: 10.1126 / science.1092320 , pp. 334–338
7. ↑ MIT Atom Interferometer Group
8. ↑ David W. Keith, Christopher R. Ekstrom, Quentin A. Turchette & David E. Pritchard: An interferometer for atoms. In: Physical Review Letters . Vol. 66, Issue 21, 1991, DOI: 10.1103 / PhysRevLett.66.2693 , pp. 2693–2696 ( PDF; 772 kB )
9. ^ DW Keith, ML Schattenburg, Henry I. Smith & DE Pritchard: Diffraction of atoms by a transmission grating. In: Physical Review Letters . Vol. 61, Issue 14, 1988, DOI: 10.1103 / PhysRevLett.61.1580 , pp. 1580-1583
10. ↑ Peter J. Martin, Bruce G. Oldaker, Andrew H. Miklich & David E. Pritchard: Bragg Scattering of Atoms from a Standing Light Wave. In: Physical Review Letters . Vol. 60, Issue 6, 1988, DOI: 10.1103 / PhysRevLett.60.515 , pp. 515-518 ( PDF; 595 kB )