This theoretical physics research revolves around the unprecedented opportunities created by our experimental ability to measure and control atoms and molecules. For example, individual atoms can be used as a clock to measure time and space to an incredible precision, and are used in the global positioning system satellites to enable location pin-pointing here on Earth. The experimental advances drive the need for high-precision calculations on the interactions of atoms and their ions with electric and magnetic fields. The physical interactions between two, three and four atoms will also be characterized through the development of novel theoretical and computational tools towards improving the control of chemistry.
The massive set of data produced during the course of this project will be compiled into a prototype atomic, molecular and optical physics database, called 'Atom Foundry'. Computational science and physics undergraduate and graduate students will be involved in all aspects of the research including the development of a website, designed around a periodic table, except that it will access the Atom Foundry database. This will give other researchers more information on how to manipulate our atomic building blocks for future applications such as the ions used in quantum computers and the atoms used in nanotechnology. All of which are part of the quest for the building of smaller and smaller useful things.
The first grand challenge of the Atomic, Molecular and Optical 'AMO Physics 2010' National Research Council Survey regards the unprecedented opportunities created by our ability to measure and control atoms and chemistry to extremely high precision using lasers. The experimental advances drive the need for supporting calculations that were performed as part of this one-year long NSF funded project. This project involved using high-performance computers to explore the structure of atoms, ie. how the electrons orbit different atoms in the periodic table, and how we can use lasers of different colours to excite the electrons into different orbitals and change the overall properties of the atoms. 1 Ph.D. in Computational Science student, 2 Masters in Physics students and 2 undergraduate physics majors were involved in this research. They learnt how to do cutting-edge computational physics research, ie. developing or adapting the theoretical equations, and then developing the FORTRAN computer code to perform the simulations and solve the equations. One particular achievement were the computations for the alkali-metal atoms (H, Li, Na, K) of their various responses to being exposed to lasers and other electric fields. The hyperpolarisabilities and non-linear susceptibility for these systems were computed, which tells us how the electrons in the atoms change as the intensity of the lasers is cranked up. This is of interest for many fields of science and technology ranging from building the next generation of atomic clocks, through to the recent usage of atomic gases in holey optical fibres. We also investigated some fundamental properties of how atoms interact at long distances from other atoms and developed a method that factorises the molecular properties into their constituent atomic properties. This greatly simplifies how the forces between atoms are computed. This will be useful for generating supporting data for the purposes of high-precision applications such as in ultracold chemistry experiments. This project was envisaged around the loose motto 'enabling the research of others'. As such, to broaden the impact of this fundamental work, a prototype website www.atomfoundry.net/ was developed. Whilst in it's initial release (summer 2011) it is clunky, it does showcase how making a web interface into the data could potentially enable other researchers to compute the atomic, molecular and optical properties of their particular system on demand.
