Atomic, molecular, and optical physics (AMO) is the study of matter-matter and light-matter interactions; at the scale of one or a few atoms and energy scales around several electron volts. The three areas are closely interrelated. AMO theory includes classical, semi-classical and quantum treatments. Typically, the theory and applications of emission, absorption, scattering of electromagnetic radiation (light) from excited atoms and molecules, analysis of spectroscopy, generation of lasers and masers, and the optical properties of matter in general, fall into these categories.
William Esco Moerner is an American physical chemist and chemical physicist with current work in the biophysics and imaging of single molecules. He is credited with achieving the first optical detection and spectroscopy of a single molecule in condensed phases, along with his postdoc, Lothar Kador. Optical study of single molecules has subsequently become a widely used single-molecule experiment in chemistry, physics and biology. In 2014, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Anthony Michael Johnson is an American experimental physicist, a professor of physics, and a professor of computer science and electrical engineering at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). He is the Director of the Center for Advanced Studies in Photonics Research (CASPR), also situated on campus at UMBC. Since his election to the 2002 term as president of the Optical Society, formerly the Optical Society of America, Johnson has the distinction of being the first and only African-American president to date. Johnson's research interests include the ultrafast photophysics and nonlinear optical properties of bulk, nanostructured, and quantum well semiconductor structures, ultrashort pulse propagation in fibers and high-speed lightwave systems. His research has helped to better understand processes that occur in ultrafast time frames of 1 quadrillionth of a second. Ultrashort pulses of light have been used to address technical and logistical challenges in medicine, telecommunications, homeland security, and have many other applications that enhance contemporary life.
Martin Gruebele is a German-born American physical chemist and biophysicist who is currently James R. Eiszner Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Physics, Professor of Biophysics and Computational Biology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he is the principal investigator of the Gruebele Group.
Brian J. Orr is an Australian scientist known for various experimental and theoretical contributions to molecular and optical physics, including laser spectroscopy and optical parametric oscillators.
Philip H. Bucksbaum is an American atomic physicist, the Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor in Natural Science in the Departments of Physics, Applied Physics, and Photon Science at Stanford University and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. He also directs the Stanford PULSE Institute.
Duncan G. Steel is an American experimental physicist, researcher and professor in quantum optics in condensed matter physics. He is the Robert J. Hiller Professor of Electrical Engineering, Professor of Physics, Professor of Biophysics, and Research Professor in the Institute of Gerontology at the University of Michigan. Steel is also a Guggenheim Scholar and a Fellow of American Physical Society, the Optical Society of America, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. He coedited the five-volume series on the Encyclopedia of Modern Optics.
Michael David Fayer is an American chemical physicist. He is the David Mulvane Ehrsam and Edward Curtis Franklin Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University.
Time-resolved two-photon photoelectron (2PPE) spectroscopy is a time-resolved spectroscopy technique which is used to study electronic structure and electronic excitations at surfaces. The technique utilizes femtosecond to picosecond laser pulses in order to first photoexcite an electron. After a time delay, the excited electron is photoemitted into a free electron state by a second pulse. The kinetic energy and the emission angle of the photoelectron are measured in an electron energy analyzer. To facilitate investigations on the population and relaxation pathways of the excitation, this measurement is performed at different time delays.
Jun Ye is a Chinese-American physicist at JILA, National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the University of Colorado Boulder, working primarily in the field of atomic, molecular and optical physics.
Shaul Mukamel is a chemist and physicist, currently serving as a Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Irvine. He is known for his works in Non linear Optics and Spectroscopy.
David Wixon Pratt is an American physicist, Professor of Chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh.
Amy S. Mullin is an American chemist and Professor at the University of Maryland. She is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Optical Society of America. Her research focuses on molecular dynamics.
Helen H. Fielding is a Professor of physical chemistry at University College London (UCL). She focuses on ultrafast transient spectroscopy of protein chromophores and molecules. She was the first woman to win the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) Harrison-Meldola Memorial Prize (1996) and Marlow Award (2001).
Hrvoje Petek is a Croatian-born American physicist and the Richard King Mellon Professor of Physics and Astronomy, at the University of Pittsburgh, where he is also a professor of chemistry.
Tamar Seideman is the Dow Chemical Company Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Physics at Northwestern University. She specialises in coherence spectroscopies and coherent control in isolated molecules and dissipative media as well as in ultrafast nanoplasmonics, current-driven phenomena in nanoelectronics and mathematical models.
Debabrata Goswami FInstP FRSC, is an Indian chemist and the Prof. S. Sampath Chair Professor of Chemistry, at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. He is also a professor of The Department of Chemistry and The Center for Lasers & Photonics at the same Institute. Goswami is an associate editor of the open-access journal Science Advances. He is also an Academic Editor for PLOS One and PeerJ Chemistry. He has contributed to the theory of Quantum Computing as well as nonlinear optical spectroscopy. His work is documented in more than 200 research publications. He is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, Fellow of the Institute of Physics, the SPIE, and The Optical Society. He is also a Senior Member of the IEEE, has been awarded a Swarnajayanti Fellowship for Chemical Sciences, and has held a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellowship. He is the third Indian to be awarded the International Commission for Optics Galileo Galilei Medal for excellence in optics.
Majed Chergui is a Swiss and French physicist specialized in ultrafast dynamics of light-induced processes. He is a professor at EPFL, head of the Laboratory of Ultrafast Spectroscopy at EPFL's School of Basic Sciences, and founding director of the Lausanne Centre for Ultrafast Science (LACUS).
Olga Smirnova is a Russian physicist who is Head of the Strong Field Theory Group at the Max Born Institute for Nonlinear Optics and Short Pulse Spectroscopy and Professor at the Technical University of Berlin. Her research considers the interaction of strong fields with atoms and molecules.
Jim Watson, FRS, who published under the name J.K.G. Watson, was a molecular spectroscopist most well known for the development of the widely used molecular Hamiltonians named after him, which are sometimes called "Watsonians" or "Watson Hamiltonians".
