Achievement

Important progress was made in achieving a major educational goal of our IGERT: the establishment of a new laboratory that will allow the demonstration of three sophisticated optical phenomena for the next generation of IGERT and other students. This laboratory will consist of three major experiments: 1) high resolution Fabry Perot interferometry, 2) the generation and characterization of polarization entangled photon pairs (which is closely linked to quantum communication) and 3) magneto-optical trapping of cold atoms. The first of these was completed in the last fiscal year by M Salit. First-year IGERT student Tim Rambo has completed the construction and testing of a setup that will demonstrate the second phenomena.