Don’t whisper the news about NMI prize winner
A young physicist from the University of Western Australia (UWA) has won the prestigious federal government National Measurement Institute (NMI) Prize for his contributions to research in measurement techniques.
Dr Daniel Creedon was awarded the prize on 20 May - 2013 World Metrology Day. He is the third UWA scientist to win the award.
Dr Creedon was lauded by the institute for his ground-breaking measurements on a whispering gallery maser oscillator (WGMO). The device demonstrated the nature of the processes limiting its performance, thus pointing the way to further improvements for the WGMO as a next-generation ultrastable frequency standard.
His work with the WGMO exploits the properties of iron (Fe3+) which exists in minute quantities in a sapphire crystal. Fe3+ ions can be stimulated by resonant whispering gallery modes in sapphire to generate a microwave laser with a pure and regular frequency.
He improved the stability of the WGMO and developed an improved measurement system that allowed characterisation of the WGMO without adding noise.
Dr Creedon was also recognised for having characterised crystal sapphire oscillators at temperatures approaching absolute zero, thus discovering a new operational range with the potential for even better frequency stability.
With precise characterisation, he also discovered nonlinear effects which have potential application to a number of quantum technologies and to the generation of microwave frequency combs.
Dr Creedon is a member of the UWA node of EQuS - a multi-institutional collaborative Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence which studies and exploits the strangest features of quantum physics.
World Metrology Day celebrates the signing (by representatives of 17 nations) of the Metre Convention on 20 May 1875. The convention set the framework for global collaboration in the science of measurement and in its industrial, commercial and societal application. The original aim of the Metre Convention was the worldwide uniformity of measurement.
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