The Stanford Photonics Research Center

John Kitching describes recent progress in the development of millimeter-scale instruments based on alkali atom vapor cells implemented with microfabrication techniques. Because of their small size and correspondingly low power requirements, these "chip-scale" atomic clocks and magnetometers have the potential to bring atomically precise instrumentation to portable, battery-operated systems such as GPS receivers, remote sensors and wireless communication devices. In addition, wafer-level processing and assembly potentially allows for very low cost per instrument if high volumes are produced.

Norbert Lütkenhaus studied at the RWTH Aachen and the LMU Munich, from which he graduated with a thesis in general relativity. Then he changed the field to study quantum optics and quantum cryptography under the supervision of Stephen M. Barnett at the University of Strathclyde,Scotland, UK. In 1996 he obtained his PhD. After postdoc positions ins Innsbruck (Peter Zoller and Ignacio Cirac) and the Helsinki Institute of Physics (Kalle-Antti Suominen) he worked for MagiQ Technologies (New York) to initiate the project of commercial realisation of quantum key distribution. Returning to academia in 2001, he build up and lead an Emmy-Noether Research Group at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, during which time he did his habiliation (2004). Currently he is Associate Professor at the Physics Department of the University of Waterloo and a member of the Institute of Quantum Computing.