Archived Newsletters

Officers

  • Chair: Louis F. DiMauro
  • Chair Elect: Christopher Monroe
  • Vice Chair: Gerald Gabrielse
  • Past Chair: Pierre Meystre
  • Secretary/Treasurer: Carol E. Tanner
  • Councillor: Paul Julienne

Members-at-Large

  • Elizabeth McCormack
  • Jun Ye
  • Linda Young
  • Nicolas Bigelow
  • Paul Lett
  • Chii-Dong Lin

From the Chair

Louis DiMauro

From: Louis DiMauro, The Ohio State University

Another summer is upon us and another exciting DAMOP Annual meeting has passed. It is becoming an annual tradition that each Chair reports on the record-setting numbers established by the meeting and this time is no different; we broke a thousand. By all measures the meeting was a great success in attendance, student participation and scientific scope.

The meeting site at Charlottesville was spectacular, as was the weather. I think we owe a great debt of gratitude to all the members of the local organizing committee for making this a memorable meeting, particularly our two distinguished committee chairs, Tom Gallagher and Bob Jones. I would be remiss by not thanking the very capable attention to all our needs provided by Karen Bloomfield and her entourage of enthusiastic helpers. It is efforts like this that make the meetings operation transparent to most of us. I also like to acknowledge the leadership provided by our 2009 chair, Pierre Meystre and past-chair, Bill Stwalley. Bill has rotated off the chairline but has agreed to be the main arm twister for the Nominations committee. Also, Chris Monroe, Pierre, Carol Tanner and I would like to welcome your newly elected vice-chair, Gerry Gabrielse.

The last few months have been eventful for DAMOP and the rest of science. After an extensive national search, Kate Kirby has accepted the position of Executive Officer of the APS. Kate is a DAMOP member and former chair. We wish Kate success in this new leadership role and we look forward to working with her and of course, talking physics. Here are words that I thought I would never use in the same sentence, science funding and increase. Nonetheless, the last few months has seen an unprecedented increase in support for science from our elected officials. I think we are all aware of the hardship faced by many people in these difficult economic times and we are grateful for their recognition that science will play an important role in strengthening our nation’s future. We should all be involved in the discussion for improving the future of science through the efforts at APS in education and awareness. It can simply start by broader participation in APS campaigns such as write your congressperson or APS convocation.

Next year DAMOP 2010 will be held in Houston from May 25-29, jointly with the Division of Atomic and Molecular Physics and Photon Interactions (DAMPhi) of the Canadian Association of Physicists. The conference will be organized by co-chairs Barry Dunning and Randy Hulet and our colleagues at Rice University. At the top of the list of scientific activities is celebrating the golden anniversary of the invention of the laser. George Welch (Texas A&M, College Station) has agreed to organize these activities at the Annual Meeting. Any suggestions of how to celebrate this momentous occasion would be welcomed. For more information visit the joint society web site.

Celebrations are great but doing physics during the 50th anniversary, in particular with the "coolest" laser on the face of the earth is what it is all about. The article by Linda Young details the successful lasing of the LCLS XFEL at 1.5 Angstroms. Its unprecedented high-peak power (10 GW) and ultra-fast (< 100 fs) duration will transform our thinking about x-ray matter interactions. Congratulations, to SLAC scientists and engineers for this extraordinary achievement! I am sure the results from the first experiments will be highlighted at DAMOP 2010.

With success there also come new challenges. The most significant management issues for future DAMOP meetings have been in identifying venues large enough to host the annual meeting, as well as the increasing burden on organization for the local committees and the Secretary-Treasurer for budgetary oversight. As many of you know, there has been an open discussion within the DAMOP governance and the community at large in identifying an effective solution. An ad hoc committee for the DAMOP Meeting Format and Organization Improvement was formed in 2008 headed by our Past Secretary-Treasurer Dave Schultz. A brief account can be found in this newsletter. Starting with the 2011 meeting, APS will manage the DAMOP meeting. The 42nd DAMOP meeting will be held June 13-17, 2011 in Atlanta, GA. The DAMOP governance is very in tune with our membership in trying to preserve the character that has made DAMOP so special, a community feel. We will continue in the near future to maintain this discussion at the highest level.

Enjoy the rest of the summer.

DAMOP Election-Results

DAMOP's annual election of officers takes place each spring. This year, elections were held for the positions of Vice Chair and two Executive Committee Members-at-Large. Voting opened on 15 March 2009 and closed on 30 April 2009. DAMOP’s total membership now reaches 2953 and 776 members voted. The level of participation, 26.27%, was higher than any previous year. We would like to thank everyone who voted and all of the candidates for agreeing to run. Special thanks are due to Tim Gay (Univ. of Nebraska), recent chair of the Nominating Committee. If you think you might want to get involved, the new chair of the nominating committee is Bill Stwalley.

Congratulations to the newly elected:

  • Vice Chair: Gerald Gabrielse (Harvard)
  • EC Member-at-Large: Paul Lett (NIST-Gaithersburg)
  • EC Member-at-Larger: Chii-Dong Lin (Kansas State Univ.)

The current full slate of officers appears at the head of this newsletter and on the APS web page.

In the spring of 2010, the DAMOP election will include openings for Vice Chair, APS Councillor, and two Members-at-Large. If you are interested in getting your feet wet in the political arena, then try running for one of these positions or suggest a friend by contacting the new chair of the Nominating Committee, Bill Stwalley.

The latest committee assignments when finalized will be posted on this APS web page.

DAMOP 2009

Highlights from University of Virginia

From: Tom Gallagher and Bob Jones, University of Virginia

DAMOP 2009, the 40th annual meeting of the division, was held 19–23 May on the grounds of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. This DAMOP meeting was historic in that it is likely to be the last one held on a university campus. The total number of registrants, 1012, was the highest ever recorded and a 10% increase over last year. Among the attendees were 130 international participants and 448 students.

Prior to the meeting was the Graduate Student Symposium held on Tuesday, 19 May. It was attended by 74 students and featured four speakers: Thad Walker (Univ. of Wisconsin), "Quantum Manipulations with Rydberg Atoms;" Margaret Murnane (Univ. of Colorado), "Observing the Dance of Electrons in Atoms, Molecules, and Materials;" Lene Hau (Harvard), "Quantum Control of Light and Matter;" and Robin Cote (Univ. of Conn), "Probing Fundamental Physics using Photoassociation." The workshop also included lunch at Clark Hall.

The DAMOP meeting formally began with registration on Tuesday afternoon, 19 May, in Newcomb Hall, which was followed by a Welcome Reception, an informal barbeque in the Ballroom and Courtyard of Newcomb Hall. The Reception provided an opportunity to see old friends and meet new ones.

The Wednesday morning plenary session marked the opening of the scientific program. It featured welcoming remarks by Tom Skalak, the Vice President for Research at the University of Virginia, followed by talks by this year’s two prizewinners. Mikhail Lukin (Harvard), the winner of the Rabi Prize, presented "Exploring New Frontiers of Quantum Optical Science." Gustav Gerber (Universitat Würzburg), the winner of the Broida Prize, presented "Experimental Realization of Coherent Control of molecular dynamics and chemical reactions with feedback optimized laser pulses – Quantum Control of Femtochemistry."

For the duration of the meeting there were typically six parallel oral sessions, usually two invited, two contributed, and two Focus sessions, which had two invited papers and the remainder contributed. The fraction of Focus sessions was higher than in previous meetings, and they seemed to work well. The sessions were scheduled to be no more than two hours in length to ensure ample time for informal discussion. In general, oral sessions ran from 8:00 to 12:30 and 13:30 to 15:30.

Poster sessions, with refreshments, were held in Newcomb Hall Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday afternoons, from 16:00 to 18:00. A new feature of this meeting was a Saturday afternoon poster session, from 13:30 – 15:30. In spite of it being the last session of the meeting it was well attended.

There were numerous special events during the meeting. On Tuesday evening the opportunities for Tera Flop computing were outlined by Barry Schneider (NSF), and theorists met to discuss common concerns at the subsequent TAMOC meeting. On Wednesday afternoon the editors of Physical Review Letters introduced the new online journal "Physics", and provided a very useful session on refereeing, how to write a useful report and how to rebut an unfavorable one. The relation between DAMOP and the Committee on Atomic, Molecular and Optical Science (CAMOS) was explored in a meeting Chaired by Steve Pratt (Argonne National Lab.) on Thursday, 21 May.

Following tradition, the meeting featured on Thursday, 21 May, a public lecture "The Physics of NASCAR," presented by Diandra Leslie-Pelecky (University of Texas-Dallas). Not surprisingly, the lecture, given in the heart of NASCAR country, drew quite a diverse audience from the Charlottesville community.

The conference banquet on Friday evening, 22 May, took place at the John Paul Jones Arena with 1044 people being served. Several DAMOP members were honored at the banquet with awards. The honors included announcement of the new APS Fellows sponsored by our division. Each new APS fellow received a certificate and pin. The participants in the Thesis Prize Session (details below) were also recognized, and the Thesis Prize winners were announced. Banquet attendees were entertained with an after dinner talk by Dan Kleppner (MIT) who gave an historical presentation of the life and times of I. I. Rabi. Pierre Meystre (The University of Arizona) passed the baton to Louis DiMauro (The Ohio State University), the new chair of DAMOP.

Finally, the plenary Hot Topics Session wrapped up the conference around mid-day Saturday 31 May with exciting talks by Oliver Pfister (Univ. of Virginia), Johannes Gutenberg (Univ. Mainz), John Martinis (UCSB), and George D. Tsakiris (Max-Planck Institute for Quantum Optics).

As the pictures below suggest, the meeting was animated and enjoyable. We are looking forward to next year’s DAMOP 2010 meeting in Houston and hope to see you there.

Scenes from the University of Virginia DAMOP

lecture in a full room of people

Robin Côté delivers a well-attended lecture at the Graduate Student Symposium.

Picture of a woman standing next to a banner for DAMOP

Karen Bloomfield ready for the opening of DAMOP 2009 registration in Newcomb Hall, UVA.

Two men shaking hands

Gustav Gerber receives Broida Prize from DAMOP Chair Pierre Meystre.

Woman presenting a powerpoint

The UVA conference venue provided a comfortable setting for speakers…

woman listening to the presentation

...and listeners. (Lene Hau)

people chatting in a room

Albert Stolow at the DAMOP poster session.

two older gentleman chatting

Poster sessions stimulate lively a discussions. Ennio Arimondo and Tom Bergeman)

Three man looking at a computer and discussing

David Weiss and others prefer to stand and talk….

two men sitting at a table with a computer discussing

…while Stapelfeldt and John Delos prefer to sit and talk…

group of people sitting on a grass, eating and chatting

With box lunches, Steve Rolston and others enjoy a picnic.

Two men chatting while one holds paper and pen

Old friends Steve Lundeen and Win Smith talk in the hall.

People out in the garden getting refreshments

Refreshments were served in the garden with APS Journal Editors (Basbas).

A big room with tables and chairs that are laid out for dinner

In the John Paul Jones Arena, dinner is set for 1044.

Three men on stage talking

The dinner speaker, Daniel Kleppner, readies for action with Pierre Meystre and Tom Gallagher.

DAMOP Student Travel Support
The level of student participation at DAMOP meetings has been a pride and joy of this division for decades. Student Travel Support assists many students who might not otherwise be able to attend. Over 110 students applied for support this year, and more students than ever before were supported. This year 85 students received up to $500 each in travel support. For this huge success, we thank the DAMOP Education Committee chaired by Wesley Walter (Denison University) for their hard work in searching far and wide for funds. This year, we thank NIST, ARO, AFOSR, NSF, and DAMOP for their generous financial support. Keep your eyes on upcoming newsletters and broadcast emails for information on DAMOP 2010 Student Travel Support.

Plenary Prize Session
It is never too early to start thinking about nominations for the various prizes and awards sponsored by DAMOP and by the APS. Most prizes have a July 1 deadline except for the Thesis Prize, which typically has a deadline early in December. An award nomination packet includes a substantial amount of supporting material so please do not wait until the last minute. More information on prizes of interest to the DAMOP community can be found at this web site.

Mikhail Lukin

2009 I. I. Rabi Prize
From: APS web page

Recipient: Mikhail Lukin, Harvard University

Citation: "For pioneering theoretical and experimental work at the interface between quantum optics, quantum information processing, and the quantum many body problem."

Background:
Mikhail Lukin received the Ph.D. degree from Texas A&M University in 1998. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Theoretical Atomic and Molecular Physics at Harvard University from 1998-2001. He joined the faculty of Harvard Physics Department as an Assistant Professor in 2001 and has been a Professor of Physics at Harvard since 2004. He is a fellow of the Optical Society of America. His research interests include quantum optics, quantum control of atomic and nanoscale solid-state systems, quantum dynamics of many-body systems and quantum information science. He has co-authored over 150 technical papers and has received a number of awards, including Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, David and Lucile Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering, NSF Career Award, Adolph Lomb Medal of the Optical Society of America (200) and AAAS Newcomb Cleveland Prize. His research group webpage.

2009 Herbert P. Broida Prize for Atomic and Molecular Spectroscopy of Chemical Physics
From: APS web page

Recipient: Gustav Gerber, Universitat Würzburg

Citation: "For the pioneering experimental realization of coherent control of molecular dynamics and chemical reactions with feedback-optimized laser pulses."

Background: Photograph and biography not presently available at time of publication.

Graduate Student Thesis Prize Session

We would like to recognize and congratulate all participants in the thesis prize session. In order of appearance they were: Javier von Stecher, Andrew Ludlow, Guthrie Partridge, and Thomas Corbitt. The DAMOP Thesis Prize Committee has the tough job of selecting the finalists and winners from numerous excellent nominations, and their job isn’t over until the final decision is made. This year we thank Alex Cronin (The University of Arizona) and his committee for their efforts. Usually there is only one winner, but this being an exceptional year, two winners were chosen. The committee met and selected the winners after their presentations at DAMOP 2009. Committee work begins again this fall with Elizabeth McCormack as chair (Bryn Mawr). The nomination deadline is December 1, 2009.

About this Year's Two DAMOP Thesis Prize Recipients

Andrew Ludlow, NIST-Boulder

Andrew Ludlow

Andrew Ludlow was raised in southeastern Connecticut. After graduating from Ledyard High School, he pursued undergraduate studies at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. There he worked with Dr. Scott Bergeson, using optical cavities and laser thermometry techniques to study two photon absorption processes in crystals. After graduating magna cum laude with a B.S. in physics from BYU, in 2002 he began his doctoral studies at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Following time in various laboratories as part of the Optical Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship Program at CU, he began research in the group of Dr. Jun Ye at JILA. Andrew’s doctoral dissertation presents the development of an optical atomic clock based on ultracold neutral strontium atoms confined in an optical lattice. This work culminated in an accuracy evaluation of the newly constructed strontium optical frequency standard, demonstrating one of the smallest frequency uncertainties of any standard, including primary standards based on cesium. Furthermore, these efforts contributed to the international acceptance of the strontium standard as a practical realization of the meter and a secondary representation of the (SI) second. Andrew received the JILA scientific achievement award in 2006. He currently works with Dr. Chris Oates as a National Research Council postdoctoral fellow at NIST in Boulder.

Javier Von

Javier von Stecher, JILA-NIST and University of Colorado

Javier von Stecher was raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and attended the University of Buenos Aires where he worked on the Casimir effect under Prof. F. D. Mazzitelli of the Physics Department. In 2002, he earned his Licenciatura degree in physics. In 2003, he moved to Boulder, Colorado, to begin graduate studies at the University of Colorado. In 2004, he joined Chris Greene’s group at JILA, a joint institute of the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Colorado, Boulder. His research focused on the study of ultracold few-body systems with tunable interactions. Through the application of powerful numerical techniques, he was able to improve the general understanding of few-body phenomena, in particular four-body processes. Since defending his dissertation in 2008, he has joined Dr. Ana Maria Rey’s group at JILA as a postdoctoral research associate. He is currently studying ways to control and manipulate quantum mechanical interactions in many-body quantum systems at both nano and mesoscopic scales.

Undergraduate Research Session
We applaud the hard work of all of the undergraduates who participated in the conference. From the pool of undergraduate participants, we would like to congratulate the few who were invited to speak in the Undergraduate Research Session: Bert D. Copsey, James Hostetter, Melissa Revelle, Cory D. Schillaci, Dustin Ursery, Smantha L. White. Their presentations were fabulous and spanned a wide variety of research topics. We would like to thank the DAMOP Education Committee, Wesley Walter [chair] (Denison University), Jan Chaloupka (William and Mary), and Tom Donnelley (Harvey Mudd) for the organization of this session. Jan Chaloupka is the new chair of the Education Committee and his new address is University of Northern Colorado.

APS Fellowship Through DAMOP

DAMOP nominates several candidates for APS Fellowship each year. The newest DAMOP sponsored APS Fellows, honored at the DAMOP 2009 banquet, are listed here.

The successful candidates are elected by the APS Council. Gerald Gabrielse, as Vice Chair, is the new chair of the DAMOP Fellowship Committee. The deadline is set by the DAMOP Fellowship committee and is April 1, 2010. It is never too early to start preparing these nominations. Packets are submitted on-line through the APS web page. Details can be found at here.

DAMOP 2010 Annual Meeting

From: Randy Hulet, Rice University

Rice University is hosting DAMOP 2010 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Houston, Texas from May 25 to 29. Keep an eye on the conference website, for up-to-date information on housing, registration, abstract submission, etc. We hope to see you all in Houston in 2010!

DAMOP Meeting Format and Organizing Improvement Committee Report

From: David Schultz, Oak Ridge National Laboratory

For more than the past year the ad hoc committee on DAMOP Meeting Improvement, along with the Chair Line and Executive Committee, has worked to solicit input from the community on improving the format and organization of our Annual Meeting, for example, through a Town Hall Meeting at the Penn State meeting.

As reported in the Newsletter last December, this process has led to several actions that we sincerely hope will improve our annual meeting in terms of its management – in light of the tremendous growth in its attendance, number of events, and cost – and in the experience that DAMOP members will have participating in it.

The work of the ad hoc committee is now complete, but two important next-steps are already underway. The first stems from the recognition that a number of different activities occur leading up to and at the Annual Meeting involving students which should be brought under more coordinated organization. Presently, the Secretary/Treasurer organizes support for student travel to DAMOP, the Education Committee seeks supplemental funds for student travel support and organizes the Undergraduate Research Session, the Thesis Prize committee carries out the solicitation and judging at the graduate research session, and the local committee organizes the student tutorial sessions and Educators’ Day, for example. The cost for these activities is often about $60,000 to $75,000 and involves more than a hundred students and dozens of DAMOP volunteers. Therefore the committee proposed that the Executive Committee form a new and expanded Education Committee subsuming these responsibilities to coordinate and organize the student activities more efficiently and to provide a clearer view of the costs.

Second, the committee proposed that a liaison with APS be appointed to coordinate organization and management of the annual meeting in 2011. The liaison will work with the APS meetings staff to ensure that all the things that make a DAMOP Annual Meeting pleasant and well organized will take place. The APS staff will do what they do best – handling registration, hotel and conference center bookings, arranging catering and banquet functions, printing the Bulletin, etc. - and the regular DAMOP committees will handle organizing the program. So, we are happy to announce …

The 2011 DAMOP Annual Meeting

The 2011 Annual Meeting will be held June 13-17, 2011 at the Marriott Marquis Hotel and Convention Center in Atlanta, Georgia. The meeting will be managed by the APS meetings staff and organized as usual by the DAMOP Chair Line, Executive Committee, Program Committee, and the DAMOP-APS Annual Meeting Liaison. The happy duty of being the first Liaison will fall to Dave Schultz. We are looking for help from DAMOP members in the Atlanta vicinity to organize an outreach event at the Annual Meeting, so if would like to aid in this effort, please email Dave. This outreach could take the form of a public lecture or a set of demonstrations appropriate for high school students, for example. We are looking forward to a successful and enjoyable meeting in Atlanta in 2011. More information about the meeting will be made available through a website and future Newsletters.

Conferences, Workshops, and Other Information

Update on the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS)
From: Linda Young, Argonne National Laboratory

World’s First X-ray Free-Electron Laser – Lasing at 1.5 Angstroms!

On April 10, 2009, the LCLS, world’s first x-ray free electron laser, began operation in an impressive fashion. Initial goals were to switch it on and achieve lasing at a wavelength of 15 Angstroms. Researchers would then attempt to tune the system down to a wavelength of 1.5 Angstroms. However, the laser immediately started working at 1.5 Angstroms, a testament to precision alignment of the undulators and the high quality of the 13.6 GeV electron beam. (See details). Now the community eagerly awaits the completion of the laser conditioning and diagnostics suite and the AMO endstation. The first round of 11 user experiments begins September 17 and concludes December 16. Beamtime on the LCLS is awarded through a competitive proposal evaluation process. October 1 is the deadline for the next Call for Proposals for experiments in the August–December 2010 timeframe on three endstations. Information about the proposal process and the three endstations is available at http://lcls.slac.stanford.edu/user/. To hear about the latest developments, one may attend the SSRL/LCLS Users' Organization Annual Conference, October 19-21, 2009.

Gaseous Electronics Conference (GEC)
From: Murtadha A Khakoo, Cal State University Fullerton, and Mirko Vukovic, U.S. Technology Development Center, Albany, New York

The Sixty Second Annual Gaseous Electronics Conference (GEC) will be held Oct 20-23, 2009 at the Saratoga Hilton Hotel/Saratoga Springs City Center.

Deadlines: Abstracts–Past, Early Registration–August 22, Room Reservations–Sept. 18.
Topics include: basic phenomena and plasma processes in partially ionized gases; and the theory and measurement of basic atomic and molecular collision processes. Papers reporting on experimental, theoretical, and computational studies that address either fundamental properties of low-temperature plasmas or their applications are encouraged.

  • Applications of interest include, but are not limited to:
  • Heavy particle interactions: ion-atom, ion-molecule, neutral-neutral
  • Electron and photon collisions with atoms and molecules
  • Ionospheric phenomena
  • Ion sources
  • Plasma processing of materials including semiconductors
  • Metals, insulators, MEMS devices and displays
  • Biological and emerging applications of plasmas
  • Plasma-surface interactions
  • Plasma diagnostics
  • Plasma Aided Implantation
  • High pressure and micro-plasmas
  • Gas discharge lamps
  • Gas lasers
  • Plasma chemistry and combustion
  • Plasma aerodynamics
  • Thrusters
  • Capacitively and Inductively Coupled Plasmas
  • Plasma Polarization Spectroscopy

Although most papers will deal with low-energy processes, papers that concern electronic or radiative processes produced by high-energy electrons or heavy particles are also welcome.

The 62nd GEC will also present the following special topics:

  1. Special session on Plasma Ion Implantation
  2. Workshop on latest advances in experiment & theory of electron & ion kinetics with applications to modeling
  3. A lecture, documentary, and exhibition commemorating Nobel Laureate Irving Langmuir who lived and worked in nearby Schenectady
  4. Tutorials on intellectual property and Tech-X Corporation’s PIC code Vorpal

Additional details can be found at the conference websites:

DAMOP at the 2010 APS March Meeting
From: Brian DeMarco, University of Illinois

CALL FOR NOMINATIONS OF INVITED SPEAKERS…The 2010 APS March Meeting will be held March 15-19, 2010 in Portland, OR. At the 2009 APS March Meeting, DAMOP sponsored 15 sessions, with nearly 200 abstracts. We expect that DAMOP will represent a similarly large presence next year. DAMOP will be sponsoring three focus sessions on "Hybrid AMO–condensed matter systems for quantum information science," "Quantum simulation using AMO systems," and "Strongly interacting quantum gases," as well as four invited sessions. Please consider nominating speakers for invited talks both in the invited and focus sessions—in the past we have had great invited symposia, and this can only continue with active participation from the members of DAMOP. The program committee can only invite speakers who have been nominated. The call for abstracts will go out no later than August 3rd, and will include details of how to submit an abstract and how to nominate speakers. The abstract deadline will be October 9, 2009.

Advances in Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics, Now on-line
From: Paul Berman,

The editors of Advances in Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics, Ennio Arimondo, Paul Berman, and Chun Lin, are pleased to announce that all volumes of the Advances series are now available online via Science Direct (vols. 1-25 appear under the title Advances in Atomic and Molecular Physics). This is a long-standing series, currently published by Elsevier, which covers many topics of current interest to the DAMOP community. DAMOP members should feel free to contact any of the editors with suggestions for future contributions to the Advances series.

Jobs and Funding Opportunities

Postdoctoral Research at Harvard University
From: Gerald Gabrielse, Harvard University

The Gabrielse group at Harvard is looking for one or two postdocs, to work on a new electron electric dipole experiment and on antihydrogen experiments. Application instructions and a summary of group research activities are on our recently updated web page.

Clare Boothe Luce Postdoctoral Instructorship at Notre Dame and Saint Mary’s
From: Greg Crawford, Dean of the College of Science, University of Notre Dame

The Notre Dame/Saint Mary’s Clare Boothe Luce Postdoctoral Instructorship in Physics. The Department of Physics at the University of Notre Dame invites applications for a new postdoctoral instructorship in physics. The position is restricted by the Clare Boothe Luce bequest to the Henry Luce Foundation to women who are U.S. citizens. The successful candidate will be expected to conduct research at Notre Dame and teach physics at Saint Mary’s College. The principal research areas of the Notre Dame Physics Department include astronomy/astrophysics, atomic physics, biophysics, condensed matter physics, high energy physics, nuclear physics and optical physics. Candidates from any of these research areas are eligible. The teaching portion of the position will occur at Saint Mary’s College, an undergraduate, Catholic women’s college sharing a common heritage with the University of Notre Dame. The teaching responsibilities are three lecture hours per week, two 2-hour labs per week and at least 4 office hours per week for the Fall and Spring semesters. The course will be calculus based physics for students in the life sciences. The position will allow the instructor to have independence while also having the opportunity to interact with and receive mentoring from experienced teachers at both institutions. The appointment will be for one year with the possibility of renewal. Interested individuals should send a curriculum vitae, a statement of research and teaching interests, and arrange for three letters of reference to be sent directly to: Postdoctoral Instructorship Search Committee, Department of Physics, 225 Nieuwland Science Hall, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556 or by email.

ARO seeks A&M program manager
From: Peter Reynolds, ARL/AOR

Job Location: Durham, North Carolina

Description: The Army Research Office is looking for a program manager of its atomic and molecular physics program. This is open to people at all career levels, from relatively junior people to senior people looking for a change in scenery. Candidates with ideas for future funding directions for the community, and who will actively work for the field, are especially encouraged to apply. For more information, go to the web site below, search on "employment"; click "search for jobs," and enter either NEAC09632692D or NEAC09632549D (for two different potential levels of experience). These positions will also be advertised in Physics Today.

Position URL

Closing Date: 16 Sep 2009

Postdoctoral Position in Attosecond Physics
The group of Prof. DiMauro and Agostini at The Ohio State University has openings for postdoctoral research associates in experimental atomic and optical physics. The group’s current interests are in the generation and application of attosecond pulses, e.g. time-resolved electron dynamics and molecular tomography. A collaboration exists with SLAC for investigating strong-field ionization using the LCLS x- ray free-electron laser. Experience in ultra-fast lasers, electron spectroscopy and an ultra-high vacuum technique is desirable. The start date is flexible but a January 2010 opening is anticipated. For further information, please contact Louis DiMauro or Pierre Agostini. To
apply for this position, please send your CV and names of three references.

International Travel Grant Award Program
From: Michelle Irwin, APS

The next deadline will be at the end of December 2009. The deadlines are typically end of June and end of December. Please check the ITGAP website for announcements and updates:

Following the initiative of the APS Forum on International Physics (FIP), the sponsors* of the APS International Travel Grant Award Program (ITGAP) recognize that funding for collaborations between developed and developing country scientists is often insufficient to meet existing needs and opportunities. While the needs are great, and though we have only limited resources to stimulate growth of longer-term collaborations, we believe that an International Travel Grant Award Program, even a modest one, may make a significant difference. The purpose is to promote international scientific collaborations between APS members and physicists in developing countries.

The grants provide up to US$2,000 for travel and lodging expenses for international travel while visiting a collaborator. A collaborative visit must be for a period of at least one month. One or both partners (co-applicants) in the collaboration must be APS members of at least one of the sponsoring APS units. Other criteria and details.

*ITGAP sponsors: APS Divisions of Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics (DAMOP), Astrophysics (DAP), Computational Physics (DCOMP), Materials Physics (DMP), Nuclear Physics (DNP), Physics of Beams (DPB), Particles and Fields (DPF), and Plasma Physics (DPP), the APS Forum on International Physics (FIP), the APS Topical Group on Magnetism and its Applications (GMAG), the APS Office of International Affairs, and the U.S. Liaison Committee for the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics.

Future Newsletters

Newsletters typically appear in July, November, and March and are assembled by the DAMOP Secretary/Treasurer. If you have information that might be of interest to all DAMOP members please send the information to Carol Tanner, DAMOP Secretary/Treasurer.