CHESTERTOWN, MD—On Tuesday, December 3, Frank Narducci of the Naval Air Systems Command presents “Naval Applications of Wave Particle Duality with the Coldest Stuff on Earth,” a lecture about the science of cold atoms. The event will take place at 4:30 p.m. in Litrenta Lecture Hall, of the Toll Science Center. It is free and open to the public.

Physicist Narducci has been working with “the coldest stuff on Earth” since 1997, the same year that the science of cold atoms won its first Nobel Prize. Research in the field has since been the basis for some dozen Nobel Prize winners, demonstrating the innovative importance of ultra-cold atoms and their application in navigation and sensing technologies. Narducci and his team at the Naval Air Station Patuxent River, located in St. Mary’s County, have worked with pressure from light waves and specially tailored magnetic fields to chill atoms to temperatures to less than ten millionths of a degree above absolute zero.  In his talks, he strives to make the science understandable to the layperson. “I’m used to presenting the science to admirals, who are smart guys but not physicists,” he says.

In addition to his work at the Naval Air Systems Command, Narducci serves as Associate Editor of Physical Review A and Adjunct Associate Editor for Physical Review Letters, both published by the American Physical Society. He earned his master’s and doctorate degrees in physics from the University of Rochester.

–Kimberly Uslin ’14