In its second report in recent months dealing with the future of physics, the National Research Council said that while atomic, molecular, and optical (AMO) science is thriving in the US, it faces six scientific “grand challenges” that require “reinforced” federal funding. “Although the [US] has led much of this research and development so far, the new questions in the field are more daunting than ever,” said Robert Eisenstein, co-chair of the NRC’s Committee on AMO 2010, which wrote the report, entitled Controlling the Quantum World. “We will not be able to maintain world leadership without a strong commitment to basic research in this area.” Stanford University physicist Philip Bucksbaum is the other co-chair.
The six challenges that need support, the report says, are new methods to measure the nature of space and time with high precision, the new field of coherent quantum gases, the development of new x-ray free-electron...
