Physics Portal - OverviewPhysics research at NIST includes everything from improving the safety of medical radiation procedures to developing future "quantum information" technologies that generate unbreakable codes. NIST provides the measurements, standards, and technical expertise scientists and industries need to push the limits of the fundamental properties of nature. Subject Areas
Programs and Projects
Quantum
Quantum science and engineering has the potential to revolutionize 21st century technology in much the same way that lasers, electronics, and … more
Optical scattering from surfaces
We study how material properties, surface topography, and contaminants affect the distribution of light scattered from surfaces. Our aim is to … more
Optical grating scatterometry
This program aims to develop standards, methods, and modeling for assessing the periodic structures using optical reflectance and transmittance … more
Photometry
The purpose of photometry is to measure light in a way that takes the sensitivity of human visual system into account. While radiometry measures … more
Theory of Transport in Graphene
Graphene, a single layer of carbon atoms, is one of the most likely materials to produce the next breakthrough in the electronics … more
Collagen Films Protocol
Background: Collagen type 1 is the most prevalent extracellular protein in connective tissue, and is part of the family of collagens that are … more Instruments
Bidirectional optical scattering facility
Goniometric optical scatter instrument (GOSI) The bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) quantifies the angular distribution of … more
Spectrally tunable lighting facility
Solid-state lighting (SSL) is increasingly being introduced into the market and it is expected that many of the light sources currently used for … more
Continuous-wave terahertz spectrometer
The continuous-wave terahertz spectrometer makes use of two near-infrared lasers. The first laser is a fixed-frequency cw ring Ti:Sapp laser … more
Facility for spectroradiometric calibrations (FASCAL)
The FASCAL has been in continuous operations since 1970s for the calibrations of spectral radiance of sources. The measurements are performed by … more
Aperture area measurement facility
NIST has established an absolute aperture area measurement facility for circular and near-circular apertures use in radiometric instruments. The … more
Infrared reference integrating sphere (IRIS)
An integrating-sphere system has been designed and constructed for the measurement of multiple optical properties in the infrared spectral range. … more Software
SCATMECH
SCATMECH is an object-oriented C++ class library developed to distribute models for light scattering applications. Included in the library are … more
Modeled integrated scattering tool (MIST)
The MIST program has been developed to provide users with a general application to model an integrated scattering system. The program performs an … more
NIST's Integrated colony enumerator (NICE)
Enumeration of bacterial colonies on an agar plate is simple in concept, but automated colony counting is difficult due to variations in colony … more
Noncollinear phase matching in uniaxial and biaxial crystals
Although significant work has been done to characterize collinear phase matching and to present many of its applications, noncollinear phase … more
FPGA-based multicoincidence recipe and software
The Data Acquisition Platform project allows one to build their own data acquisition instruments that collect and, if necessary, statistically … more
Electron holography
An electron hologram is a fringe modulated image containing the amplitude and phase information of an electron transparent object. The HolograFREE … more |
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