Speaker: Heather Lewandowski
TITLE: "Ultracold Molecular Interactions."ABSTRACT: Interactions between free-radical molecules drive many important processes including chemistry in the atmosphere. These processes are complicated and difficult to understand because the molecules are at a relatively high temperature and thus have a large distribution of velocities. Recently, we have begun to cool free-radical molecules to near absolute zero where the molecules’ motion is reduced dramatically. We can now study how molecules interact and react with unprecedented precision. I will describe how we cool the molecules and what we can learn by studying their interactions.
BIOGRAPHY: I received my B.S. in physics from Michigan Technological University in 1997. Next, I entered the graduate program at the University of Colorado and worked in the group of Eric Cornell. I studied spinor Bose-Einstein condensates and earned my Ph.D. in 2002. I received a National Research Council fellowship to work at NIST in the group of Jun Ye. We cooled molecules for high-resolution spectroscopic studies related to the change in fundamental constants. Then in the fall of 2005, I entered my current position as an Assistant Professor of Physics and Associate Fellow of JILA.