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Stephen Eckel (Fed)

Stephen Eckel is an expert in cold atom systems, sensors and atomtronics. He joined the Thermodynamic Metrology Group in 2016 to help develop the new cold atom vacuum standard as part of the cold core technology program. An active member of the American Physical Society, his research interests include cold atom sensors, photonics, and their integration.

Stephen’s research background is quite varied. As a postdoctoral researcher at NIST, he helped develop atomtronic sensors for rotation, observe unique effects in ring-shaped condensates like hysteresis, and simulate other physical phenomena like cosmological expansion. As a graduate student, he worked on two projects attempting to measure the electron’s electric dipole moment, a property, which if it exists, would violate parity and time symmetry and point to physics beyond the standard model.

Highlight

A New Way to Measure Nearly Nothing

Publications

Grating magneto-optical traps with complicated level structures

Author(s)
Daniel Barker, Peter Elgee, Ananya Sitaram, Eric Norrgard, Nikolai Klimov, Gretchen K. Campbell, Stephen Eckel
We study the forces and optical pumping within grating magneto-optical traps (MOTs) operating on transitions with non-trivial level structure. In contrast to

Radiative Decay Rate and Branching Fractions of MgF

Author(s)
Eric Norrgard, Catherine Cooksey, Stephen Eckel, Nickolas Pilgram, Kayla Rodriguez, Howard W. Yoon, Yuly Andrea Chamorro Mena, Lukáš Pašteka, Anastasia Borschevsky
Here we report measured and calculated values of radiative decay rates and vibrational branching fractions for the A$^2\Pi$ state of MgF. The decay rate

Simulations of a frequency-chirped magneto-optical trap of MgF

Author(s)
Kayla Rodriguez, Nickolas Pilgram, Daniel Barker, Stephen Eckel, Eric Norrgard
We simulate the capture process of MgF molecules into a frequency-chirped molecular MOT. Our calculations show that by chirping the frequency, the MOT capture

Patents (2018-Present)

Optomechanical Pressure Measurement System And Method Using The Vibrational Modes Of A Membrane

NIST Inventors
Stephen Eckel , James A. Fedchak , Thomas Purdy and Robinjeet Singh
An optomechanical pressure-measurement system measures pressure in the range of 10.sup.−6 Pa-10.sup.−2 Pa by measuring various properties of a vibrational mode of an ultra-thin membrane member. With independent measurements of the thickness and density of the membrane, in addition to the measured

Uniaxial Counter-Propagating Monolaser Atom Trap

NIST Inventors
Stephen Eckel , James A. Fedchak , Julia Scherschligt , Daniel Barker , Eric Norrgard and Nikolai Klimov
A uniaxial counter-propagating monolaser atom trap cools and traps atoms with a single a laser beam and includes: an atom slower that slows atoms to form slowed atoms; an optical diffractor including: a first diffraction grating that receives primary light and produces first reflected light; a

Optical Refraction Barometer

NIST Inventors
Kevin O Douglass , Stephen Eckel , Jacob Edmond Ricker and Jay H. Hendricks
A new method for measuring refractivity-based pressure changes using a dual Fabry-Perot cavity utilizing a single laser with off-set sideband locking to the second cavity. The method thus far has shown sensitivity and resolution of 4 mPa.
Image for 10,816,325

Deformometer for Determining Deformation of an Optical Cavity Optic

NIST Inventors
Zeeshan Ahmed , Kevin O Douglass , Stephen Eckel , Patrick Egan and Jay H. Hendricks
A superconducting waveform synthesizer produces an arbitrary waveform and includes an encoder that produces a bitstream; a pattern generator that produces a current bias pulse from the bitstream; a Josephson junction that produces a quantized output pulse from the current bias pulse; and a converter
Created July 30, 2019, Updated December 8, 2022