Undergraduate student, Alex Mandario, will be working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology through their Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship program on a project that is developing new quantum voltage standards using Josephson junctions, superconductor-based devices whose quantum behavior makes them perfect frequency-to-voltage converters. A historic NIST responsibility is defining such standards and disseminating them to U.S. and international measurement institutes and companies, which use them to define other standards and build accurate electrical devices. He will be doing experimental and theoretical work simulating Josephson junction dynamics.
Here is a description from NIST:
"The AC Josephson voltage standard (ACJVS) is one of several quantum-based systems that are intended to supersede artifact electrical standards. Beyond the important goal of improving calibration uncertainties, these new quantum standards are also critical to the proposed redefinition of the SI in terms of fixed physical constants, such as the speed of light or the charge of an electron. The ACJVS works as a perfect quantizer: converting weakly-defined input current pulses into voltage pulses with precisely defined (V-t) areas equal to h/2e, where h and e are fundamental constants."
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