National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Laboratory

On January 14, 2025, members of the Denver and Pikes Peak LMAG visited the  in Boulder, Colorado.

NIST Katharine Blodgett Gebbie Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado is one of the buildings

The Laboratory was named for Dr. Katharine Blodgett Gebbie who led the NIST Lab for more than 45 years.   During her tenure NIST won four Nobel Prizes in Physics.

The meeting was attended by 14 Life Members from Denver and Pikes Peak LMAG.  Our guides were Liz Donley and Yao Ma.  The group broke into two groups since the laboratory areas had limited capacity.

We visited the Photonic Synthesis lab of Frank Quinlan and the Chip-scale Atomic Devices Lab of William McGehee.  NIST is developing next generation Photonic time measurement devices to increase Universal Time accuracy beyond today’s Cesium Atom Clock.  These devices use Laser light to generate several orders of magnitude improvement over the Cesium Atom Clock used since the 1960s.  They are build miniature optical devices with high quality mirrors and micro-mirrors which operate in a vacuum for high precision.  They are scaling these to very small size.  These clocks are distributed to users for their instrumentation.

Later we visited the NIST Atomic Fountains lab of Vladi Gerginov.  This is the current source of US Universal Time.  The device manipulates Cesium atoms to measure their atomic decay.  The computer read-outs capture continuous updates to all parameters measured.  

The measurements include gravity and magnetic fields so sensitive that they were affected by the number of people in the building.

Finally we visited the Time Realization and Distribution Lab of Jeff Sherman.  Jeff explained that NIST distributes Universal Time information via the internet (time.gov), WWV at 2.5, 5, 10,15, 20, and 25 MHz, and low frequency WWVB at 60Khz.  They also distribute time via satellite links.  US Time measurements are shared with the Global Time system in Paris which receives inputs from over 100 countries standard groups.  The current Cesium atomic clock is accurate to 1 ns and future optical clocks are expected to be much more accurate.  

His lab compares the outputs of 20 different atomic clocks and is highly redundant and has battery, diesel, and natural gas backup power sources.  We watched the LED lights synchronized to the 5 MHz WWV signal flashing.

Here is information on the latest Nobel Prize winner, David Wineland.  He won in 2012 for ground breaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems.

I don’t know but NIST and it’s scientists may be the reason that the Computer Society holds it’s Quantum Week conference in Boulder.

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