Raymond Y. Chiao is an American physicist best known for his experimental work in

quantum optics Quantum optics is a branch of atomic, molecular, and optical physics and quantum chemistry that studies the behavior of photons (individual quanta of light). It includes the study of the particle-like properties of photons and their interaction ...

. He is currently an emeritus faculty member at the

University of California, Merced The University of California, Merced (UC Merced or colloquially, UCM) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Merced, California, United States. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of ...

physics department, where he is conducting research on

gravitational radiation Gravitational waves are oscillations of the gravitational field that travel through space at the speed of light; they are generated by the relative motion of gravitating masses. They were proposed by Oliver Heaviside in 1893 and then later by ...

in collaboration with Prof. Jay Sharping.

Biography

Raymond Chiao was born in Hong Kong on October 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 John Archibald Wheeler (July 9, 1911April 13, 2008) was an American theoretical physicist. He was largely responsible for reviving interest in general relativity in the United States after World War II. Wheeler also worked with Niels Bohr to e ...

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 Charles Hard Townes (July 28, 1915 – January 27, 2015) was an American physicist. Townes worked on the theory and application of the maser, for which he obtained the fundamental patent, and other work in quantum electronics associated with ...

, shortly after the experimental realization of the ruby laser. His thesis topic was on the first observation of stimulated

Brillouin scattering In electromagnetism, Brillouin scattering (also known as Brillouin light scattering or BLS), named after Léon Brillouin, refers to the interaction of light with the material waves in a medium (e.g. electrostriction and magnetostriction). It is m ...

. 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, where he advised at least 11 PhD students. After which he took a position at the UC's newly opened campus

UC Merced The University of California, Merced (UC Merced or colloquially, UCM) is a public land-grant research university in Merced, California, United States. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California (UC) system. Established in 20 ...

Discoveries

Chiao has become well known in the field of

due to several important experiments. Based on former experiments carried out by Günter Nimtz in 1992 he measured the

quantum tunnelling In physics, quantum tunnelling, barrier penetration, or simply tunnelling is a quantum mechanical phenomenon in which an object such as an electron or atom passes through a potential energy barrier that, according to classical mechanics, shoul ...

time, which was found to be between 1.5 and 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 In classical and quantum mechanics, geometric phase is a phase difference acquired over the course of a cycle, when a system is subjected to cyclic adiabatic processes, which results from the geometrical properties of the parameter space of the ...

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.

Bibliography

Books

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Articles

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References

External links

Chiao's UC Merced faculty bio page

Chiao's UC Merced bio pageChiao's academic family tree
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chiao, Raymond 1940 births Living people 21st-century American physicists Fellows of Optica (society) Hong Kong emigrants to the United States Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science alumni American optical physicists Quantum gravity physicists Princeton University alumni Scientists from New York City University of California, Berkeley College of Letters and Science faculty University of California, Merced faculty Collegiate School (New York) alumni Hong Kong physicists