Steven L. Rolston

Photo of Steven L. Rolston

Steven Rolston received his B.S. in 1980 from Wesleyan University and his Ph.D. in 1986 from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Following post-doctoral research at the University of Washington and Harvard University, he joined the staff at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in 1988. He joined the faculty of the Physics Department at the University of Maryland in 2003, where he is currently a professor and Associate Chair. His research interests include laser cooling and trapping, Bose Einstein condensation, optical lattices, quantum computing and communication, and ultracold plasmas and Rydberg gases. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the Optical Society of America, is a member of the American Physical Society Council. He has been a visiting lecturer in Austria, Mexico, and Italy, and has been involved in teacher training for elementary school science, organized a Teacher’s Day for high school physics teachers at an APS divisional meeting, and has developed graduate physics and undergraduate physics courses for both physics majors and non-science majors. Dr. Rolston has published more than 100 refereed articles.


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Ultracold neutral plasmas

Laser-cooled atomic vapors can be photoionized to form plasmas at temperatures as low as 1 K. This may allow the study of very unusual neutral plasmas with liquid and even crystalline properties. Read More »