Testing the quantum theory with accurate laser spectroscopy
Date, time: February 28, 2024 , 13:00 – 14:00
Speaker: Prof. Piotr Wcisło,
Affiliation: Nicholas Copernicus University, Toruń
The development of modern laser technologies opened the way to exciting new research focusing on testing quantum theory and searching for new physics beyond the standard model. On the one hand, the key technological component are continuous wave laser systems, spectrally very narrow, with a wide modulation band, which allows them to be tightly locked to ultra-high finesse optical cavities. This provides the technological possibility of generating a laser field with very high power packed into an extremely narrow spectral range. The second key component are femtosecond lasers operating in the optical frequency comb configuration, which enable the measurement of optical frequencies with an accuracy exceeding 1 Hz. The combination of these two technologies provides an ideal tool for ultra-accurate atomic and molecular spectroscopy, i.e. it allows for generating an electromagnetic wave with a very well-defined frequency (not only spectrally narrow, but also with the controlled absolute frequency). During the lecture, I will talk about our projects that use these technologies for the purpose of testing quantum theory and searching for new physics. I will show the results of a project aimed at searching for dark matter and the variability of fundamental constants using optical atomic clocks. I will present the progress in the project aiming at testing quantum electrodynamics with ultra-accurate spectroscopy of molecular hydrogen.
Chairman: Prof. Ireneusz Weymann