The prize!

Of the three Nobel winners in physics just announced, two of them have strong relevance to my research on antihydrogen. Ted Haensch and John Hall shared the prize for the invention of the optical frequency comb. This device literally revolutionized the field of precision optical spectroscopy.

Ted’s contributions to laser physics are quite enormous, and the frequency comb is just one last addition to his list of achievements. We all had expected he is going to win the prize one day for one reason or another. Below is a plot I always use in my talks on antihydrogen, which I call “Haensch Plot”, where the evolution of the precision in optical spectroscopy of atomic hydrogen is plotted against the year. Note the logarithmic scale! The last point in 2000 is due to his invention of the frequency comb.

Ted works on one of the antihydrogen experiments at CERN called ATRAP. On the other hand, one of my colleagues in our Canadian group of the Project ALPHA, David Jones of University of British Columbia, is the one who built the first frequency comb with John Hall, before the Haensch group.

Of course, this technique will be useful for the future antihydrogen spectroscopy, as mentioned in the background materials by Nobel Foundation: http://nobelprize.org/physics/laureates/2005/info.pdf

I suspect David surely will be attending the ceremony (and the parties!) in Stockholm in December.

Congratulations to all!