Shedding Light: How NIST’s Light Database Helps Bring You Computer Chips, Welded Steel and More

Everything we know about the universe comes from light. Cosmologists learn about the universe by studying the light from faraway stars and comparing what it shows us to the light of the same atoms here on Earth. Astronomers use this information to study the expansion of the universe after the Big Bang.

We also learn about atoms by studying their light — specifically, whether they emit or absorb particular types of light. This is what we do in my field, atomic spectroscopy.

I always say atomic spectroscopy is responsible for the fate of the universe. No pressure for those of us studying it, right?

About half of the atomic wavelengths that researchers currently study were first measured decades ago using the equipment that was available at the time.

We now have the ability to measure light much more precisely, but the scientific community needs to consolidate those new measurements into useful reference data for researchers. This helps all kinds of users have the best information possible to do their work.

The Light Database in Action

That’s why I manage the Atomic Spectra Database, a catalog of atomic spectroscopy information that industries, academia and others use to do research and make important decisions. The database distills thousands of researchers’ lifetime work into crucial, unique data that others can use.

Our database is used in fields ranging from astronomy to medicine to geology. On average, we receive 70,000 search requests from users worldwide monthly.

Plasmas are electrically charged gases that are found in welding torches, stars, light bulbs and more. Hot (and not-so-hot) plasma is used to produce many things we use every day, such as semiconductor chips in our computers.

Researchers learn about the temperature and other characteristics of plasma by looking at it, just like astronomers look at light to learn about stars. So, wherever you have plasma, our atomic database is used, such as in plasma-etching of integrated computer chips, welding and even agriculture. (Yes, plasma is used to remediate soil and help farmers in other ways.)

Companies that design lighting also often use our database. To make natural-seeming light for the human eye, you need to add some heavy elements to hot gases within the lamps. Heavy elements have high atomic numbers, meaning they have more protons in their atoms’ nuclei. But these particular elements are challenging to study, and there’s a deficiency of data on them. So, researchers use our services to help them create better light for homes, businesses and more.

Thermonuclear power plants also use hot plasmas, so atomic spectra have prominent uses in their design and operation. This industry relies heavily on our spectral database.

My Career Journey Into Spectroscopy

My first job in Russia was at the Institute of Spectroscopy in Moscow, and my Ph.D. work was on atomic spectra needed to make X-ray lasers.

I moved with my family to the U.S. and started working as a commercial programmer and software developer. I started as a contractor at NIST and became a permanent employee in 2011 after becoming a U.S. citizen.

NIST has been doing spectroscopy for more than 120 years now, and I’m honored to follow in the footsteps of giants in this field who worked here before me. They taught me so much. Joseph Reader, for example, has worked in this area for more than 70 years, mostly as an experimentalist. I learned about the specifics of every kind of light source and spectrometer from him.

I love working at NIST because it makes such good use of my skill set, and I get to use my years of research experience to benefit the country and the world. My work brings me a lot of joy. I’m tenacious and love spending time on small problems, trying to get at the root of questions and understanding as much as I can about this field.

I’m especially gratified to see how many thousands of requests we get for our database each month. By looking at the requests’ profiles, I can see that most are related to industrial applications, but a large part concern fundamental scientific research.

The Future of Atomic Spectroscopy

NIST’s role in atomic spectroscopy is to evaluate research sent to us by experts around the world. World-class scientists have different views, both in theory and in experiments. It’s our job to mediate those perspectives and vet what goes into the database. That’s what makes this role so challenging because we have to make judgment calls when we see contradictory data from different experts.

There’s no equivalent database anywhere else, so scientists all over the world count on us to provide this service that only NIST has the expertise to manage.

Another challenge is that, like nearly every field in science, the problems are getting more difficult over time. Most of the simple scientific questions have been answered in the last 100 years, and what’s left are the really tough ones.

One example is the origin of heavy elements in the universe. Remember that some elements are considered heavy, and others are considered light. Lighter elements have lower atomic numbers, which means they have fewer protons in their nuclei.

Astronomers and cosmologists have figured out how the light elements, from carbon to iron, are forged by the stars. However, it is still unclear how the heavy ones, such as gold and uranium, came into existence. They may be born in rare events, such as mergers of black holes and neutron stars. Evidence of that must be present in the light produced by such events, but we can’t know for sure until we see it. Analyzing this light involves a mind-boggling amount of spectral information that has not yet been distilled into intelligent datasets.

One of the shifts that we’re seeing is toward having atomic spectroscopy explore more fundamental physics, and that presents exciting possibilities. The field is also shifting toward improving precision measurements in things such as lasers and atom-trapping.

I am excited to see what advances atomic spectroscopy helps to make possible in the years to come as more of those hard problems are solved. I know our database will be a key part of those discoveries.