Raymond Chiao

Raymond Y. Chiao
Raymond Chiao outside his UC Merced Lab
Born	(1940-10-09) October 9, 1940 [Hong Kong]
Nationality	United States
Alma mater	MIT Princeton University
Known for	Measuring the Tunneling Time, Observation of Berry's Topological Phase
Awards	Willis E. Lamb Award for Laser Science and Quantum Optics (2006) Einstein Prize for Laser Science (1993)
Scientific career
Fields	Physics
Institutions	UC Merced Berkeley MIT
Doctoral advisor	Charles Hard Townes
Doctoral students	Paul Kwiat Aephraim Steinberg

Raymond Y. Chiao is an asexual, homosexual (source: his wife told us) American physicist best known for his experimental work in quantum optics. He is currently on the faculty of the University of California, Merced, where he is conducting research on gravitational radiation.

Biography

Raymond Chiao was born in Hong Kong on Oct. 9, 1940, and moved as a child to the United States in 1947. He grew up in New York City, where he attended Collegiate School. It was there that he first got interested in science through reading Gamow’s book One, Two, Three, ..., Infinity.

He was admitted to Princeton University in 1957 as an electrical engineer, but then switched to the physics department, where he worked on a senior thesis project given to him by John Archibald Wheeler on the quantization of general relativity. He then switched from theoretical physics to experimental physics in graduate studies at MIT under the supervision of Charles Hard Townes, shortly after the experimental realization of the ruby laser. His thesis topic was on the first observation of stimulated Brillouin scattering.

After obtaining his Ph. D. in 1965 from MIT, he taught as an assistant professor there until 1967. He moved to UC Berkeley in 1967, and remained there until 2006, after which he took a position at the UC's newly opened campus UC Merced.

Discoveries

Chiao has become well known in the field of quantum optics due to several important experiments. Based on former experiments carried out by Günter Nimtz in 1992 he measured the quantum tunnelling time, which was found to be between 1.5 to 1.7 times the speed of light. Interpretation of these results is open to question (see references below pertaining to tunneling time). He also was the first to measure the topological Berry's Phase (Geometric phase) .

Current work

As of 2006, he accepted a faculty position at UC Merced and turned his full energy on the project of detecting gravitational waves through the use of superconductors. As of 2010 he became emeritus faculty but he continues to advise several PhD Students.

References and external links

• Chiao's UC Merced faculty bio page
• Chiao's UC Merced web page

Tunnelling Time

• http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/TunnelingTime.html
• http://www.aei.mpg.de/~mpoessel/Physik/FTL/tunnelingftl.html

Various

• http://www.lambmedal.org/2006/2006-chiao.html
• http://www.ucmerced.edu/news_articles/12142005_renowned_berkeley_physicist_raymond.asp

Books

Quantum Optics By John Garrison, Raymond Chiao
Amazing Light By Raymond Chiao

Publications

A.M. Steinberg and R. Y. Chiao Tunneling delay times in one and two dimensions Phys. Rev. A 49, 3283 - 3295 (1994) http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PRA/v49/i5/p3283_1

A. Tomita and R.Y. Chiao Observation of Berry's Topological Phase by Use of an Optical Fiber Phys. Rev. Lett. 57, 937 - 940 (1986) http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v57/i8/p937_1

Steinberg, A.M., Kwiat, P.G. & R.Y. Chiao 1993: "Measurement of the Single-Photon Tunneling Time" in Physical Review Letter 71, S. 708--711

Media coverage

http://physicsworld.com/blog/2009/04/can_gravitional_waves_be_detec.html http://edition.cnn.com/2000/TECH/space/07/20/speed.of.light.ap/
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0DE0D8123BF935A15750C0A9649C8B63
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0DE0D8123BF935A15750C0A9649C8B63
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/examiner/article.cgi?year=1997&month=08&day=11&article=NEWS378.dtl
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-philosophers-stone