NSBP

July-September, 2010 Volume 1

Editorial from NSBP Outline

President, Peter Delfyett Editorial from the President ....................... page 1
Committees reports ....................... page 2
Dear NSBP Members, Minorities in Physics ....................... page 3
Members corner ....................... page 3
NSBP is pleased to release our new
Letters from President ....................... page 4
Newsletter for 2010. Our organization
has now grown to about 700 members. News ....................... page 5
We had a very successful annual meet- Short highlight articles ....................... page 6
ing on February 16, 2010 in Washington DC. Elections
were held at the meeting to select new board members:
President – Peter Delfyett; Managing Director & Trea-
surer – Lawrence Norris; Executive Administrative Of-
ficer – Chantel Damas, Executive Technical Officer –
Paul Gueye. In addition, we appointed four Ex-Officio
members on the Board: Chanda Prescod-Weinstein,
Erica Morgan, Stephen Robinson and Byron Freelon.

In the first quarter of 2010, NSBP has been involved

in developing plans for continuing the Joint NSBP/
NSHP Annual Conference. Decisions are being final-
ized and an announcement about the next conference
will be forthcoming soon. To facilitate this and other
activities, NSBP is considering amending its Constitu-
tion and By-Laws. The reasons for the amendment and The Joint Annual Conference of the National Soci-
our goals for doing so are provided in the ‘Letter from ety of Black Physicists and the National Society of
our President’ contained within this newsletter. Please take
Hispanic Physicist brings together over 500 Afri-
a moment to read and provide input to this important matter.
can American and Hispanic physicists, and is the
largest recruiting event for physics NDS astron-
NSBP has also been assessing ideas for fund-raising and omy graduate and REU programs in the country.
revenue creation. We would like to encourage all mem-
bers to make suggestions and offer ideas to the Society.
Editorial
Finally, a simple way that we all can contribute to making Editor Chanda Prescod-Weisntein
NSBP a financially strong Society is that we all commit Co-Editor Byron Freelon
to keep our membership dues current as well as encourage Technical Adviser Paul Gueye
other scientists/engineers to become members as well.
NSBP Newsletter - Volume 1 page 1
 Reports from Committees
Pre-College Program Committee event with the following abstract: “Did you know
By Paul Gueye that 90% of all micro-
2010 will be a full year for our Pre-College Program phones found in tele-
Committee. We are participating in the 2010 LaserFest phones are the result of an
initiative (see link in the front page of nsbp.org). African American scien-
Our initiative has reached tist’s research? That one
out to an elementary of the first major theories
school (Robert E. Lee El- representing our universe
ementary, Hampton, VA), as a string of energies was
a middle school summer done by another African
program (Young Doc- American physicist? Visit
tors, Hampton University, us at the National Soci-
Hampton, VA), an undergraduate school ety of Black Physicists to
(Strayer University, Newport News, VA), and perform interactive small
was presented at the 2010 APS March meet- scale physics experi-
ing held in Portland, OR. In addition, we ments, learn about career
have participated in the opportunities in physics, and find out about the im-
2010 MIT Cambridge pact of African American and women in physics.”
Science Festival on
April 24. Paul Gueye
has been selected to
be one of the 50 nifty
to performed at lo-
cal Washington DC
K-12 schools during
the 2010 USA Sci-
ence and Engineering Contact: Paul Gueye (gueye@jlab.org) if you are in-
festival (USASEF, see terested.
more below) and will Financial Ad-Hoc Committee
be representing NSBP. By Byron Freelon
Last, our now well At the 2010 NSBP/NSHP Conference a financial ad-hoc
renown Science Ambassador Program will be extended committee was formed to investigate various ways to
to two new national societies during their forthcoming raise the funding profile of our organization. Numerous
annual meetings: the American Association of Physi- ideas have been generated, during and after the con-
cists in Medicine in the summer (www.aapm.org) and ference. The ad- hoc committee determined that the
the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Na- enhancement of membership services was an important
tive Americans in Science in the Fall (www.sacnas.org). step toward increasing the Society’s ability to garner
future online funds. To this end, NSBP has started a
The Pre-College Program Committee is asking for vol- 2010 Membership Drive whose goals are to increase
unteers from the NSBP membership to participate in the membership by 50% and enhance the online experi-
2010 USA Science Festival which will be held on Octo- ence of NSBP members. The membership drive will
ber 10-24, 2010 on the National Mall in Washington, DC. last from September 2010 until February 2011. Please
NSBP submitted a Physicists are SWAG (Scientists, encourage all of your colleagues and friends to sup-
Women, African-Americans and Groovy) for this port the goals of NSBP by joining the Society today.
NSBP Newsletter - Volume 1 page 2
 Minorities in Physics
In 2007, of the 653 PhDs in physics granted at US insti- degree bachelors at
tutions to US Citizens, 2% went to African-Americans Historically Black Colleges and Universities. The down-
while 87% went to whites. Whites make up 75% of ward trend from about 35% in 2005 is projected to reach
the US population, and African-Americans are 12.5%. 25% in 2014 (an almost 30% drop within a 10 year span).
(Sources: American Institute of Physics and US Census (Source: Physics Today, June 2010 issue, page 47).
Data). As pointed in the report by Dr. Quinton, “Many
A recent opin- factors are leading to the loss of HBCU physics pro-
ion report in the June grams. They include too few undergraduate scholar-
2010 issue of Phys- ships, low visibility of career opportunities, a lack of in-
ics Today by one of structional and research infrastructure, and very little
our former NSBP executive-level administrative support ... The shortage
President, Dr. Quin- of HBCU physics programs is an ongoing problem that
ton Williams (current is now being made critical by the overall US financial
Chair of the Physics picture ...”. A 2007 report states that “... special atten-
Department and In- tion by the president, secretary of education, and the
terim Provost at Jack- heads of federal education-funding agencies should be
son State University) given to increasing the number of agencies that estab-
points to a severe de- lish and administer dedicated HBCU programs. The
crease in the number return on investment would be beneficial to all stake-
of awarded physics holders and the nation as a whole”.

Members Corner
Social Networking
NSBP members can now use a new website to com-
municate amongst each others through social net-
working tools such as: Twitter, Facebook, Ning, etc.
Site: http://continuum.nsbp.org
Contact: Stephen Roberson (stephen.roberson@mac.com)
Students
Students are our workforce for tomorrow. We are dedi-
cated to providing them with more venues to contribute to
our organization and to become successful scientists. In
addition to our social networking tool, we welcome new
students-initiatives that would empowered themselves and
enhance our organization. Send us your thoughts and ideas.
Contact: Chanda Prescod-Weinstein (chandadeepti@gmail.
com)
pertaining to science on university campuses, K-12 insti-
tution or other public venues. This “NSBP-HBCU physics
week” will provide NSBP members to present themselves
as role models for pre-college and college students, pro-
vide assistance in science and math to others, as well as
opening new mechanisms for others to collaborate with
NSBP. Send us your pictures and movies from these events.
Site: http://www.nsbp.org/hbcuphysicsweek
Contact: Paul Gueye (gueye@jlab.org)
iReporter
Do you have some cool or unusual pictures or videos of NSBP
physicists? We would love to share them with our members.
Site: http://www.nsbp.org/iReporter
Contact: Paul Gueye (gueye@jlab.org ) or Chanda Prescod-
Weinstein (chandadeepti@gmail.com)

NSBP-HBCU Physics week NSBP History

In addition to our well established annual meeting, NSBP
is launching a new Fall initiative during which we are ask-
ing each NSBP member to dedicate some time during one
week (October 4-8, 2010) and give a seminar/lecture, per-
form physics demonstrations or any other similar activity
NSBP has been in existence for more than 30 years. We are
embarking in gathering any information pertaining to the
making of a documentary for the history of the society.
Site: http://www.nsbp.org/History
Contact: Aziza Baccouche (aziza@azizaproductions.com)

NSBP Newsletter - Volume 1 page 3

 Letter from our President
Dear Members of NSBP,
In an effort to provide more governance, strengthen Board man-
agement and Operations, we are requesting input from the mem-
bership on a modification of the By-Laws and Constitution. The
current Constitution can be read at: http://nsbp.org/constitution
and the current By-Laws can be read at: http://nsbp.org/bylaws .
The Board of Directors of NSBP is seeking feedback from the
membership regarding the separation of duties of the Treasurer
and Managing Director. The Board will collect feedback from the
membership and make a determination on the strengths and weak-
nesses of the proposed amendment of the By-Laws.
We are also providing NSBP members an official notification, in
writing, of a proposed change in the Constitution that increases
the Board of Directors by 3 seats. The change in the Constitution
can only be amended by a two-thirds (2/3) affirmative vote of the
membership who are active regular members and are present in
person, proxy or ballot at a regular meeting of the Society.
The website to provide your input is: http://nsbp.diversephys-
ics.net. You will need to register to login and post your comments.
The two modifications we are currently seeking to employ are:
1) To separate the duties of Treasurer and Managing Direc-
tor. Currently, these two positions are held concurrently. This re-
quires a modification of the By-Laws.
2) To increase the number of voting Board members to pro-
vide additional input and perspective from the membership. This
requires a modification of the Constitution and a vote from the
membership.
I will address each of these two modifications of the By-Laws
separately.
1) We, the Board, believe that the positions of Treasurer and
Managing Director be separated. As it currently stands in Article
II, Section 4 of the NSBP By-Laws “The Treasurer is the Manag-
ing Director, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Business Officer
of the Society.” The By-Laws further state “The Treasurer shall be
responsible for guarding and conducting the financial and business
affairs of the Society”. We believe it is more appropriate for the
Treasurer to be responsible for conducting the financial affairs of
the Society, while the Managing Director is responsible for con-
ducting the day to day business affairs of the society. It should be
noted that the Managing Director also cannot serve as a voting
member of the Board of Directors of NSBP. We also need to spec-
ify that Board Officers are only to be compensated for expenses
incurred as part of their duties as board members, i.e. for travel,
lodgings, fees associated with board governance workshops etc.
In particular Board members should receive no form of salary or
stipend for their service. The Managing Director is appointed by
the President of NSBP based upon a recommendation from the
Board of NSBP, and serves at the pleasure of the NSBP Board.
If the workload warrants and the resources of the society are suf-
NSBP Newsletter - Volume 1
ficient, the Managing Director can receive a stipend of an amount
recommended by the Treasurer and approved by the Board. The
Managing Director is directly supervised by the Board of NSBP.
The reasons for the separation are primarily twofold:
a) TWhile in the past the current mixture of these two posi-
tions was warranted, the present size of our organization may now
present a conflict of interest; and
b) The separation of duties of these positions will provide
additional oversight of the functions of these positions.
2) The second modification pertains to the NSBP Constitu-
tion. Currently, the Board of Directors is composed of the National
Officers. Article V, Section 1 states “The National Officers of the
National Society of Black Physicists shall be President, President-
Elect, Past President, Treasurer, Administrative Executive Officer,
and Technical Executive Officer.” Article IV, Section 1b states
“The Board of Directors shall consist of the elected National Offi-
cers.” These two Articles imply that the Board of Directors is con-
stituted of the National Officers. We, the current Board of NSBP,
would like to expand the Board of Directors to include 3 additional
representatives: 1) an Industrial/Government Representative, 2) an
Academic Representative, and 3) a Student Representative.
The expansion provides three important outcomes:
a) Removal of a voting deadlock owing to the even number
of National Officers
b) Provides a broader, more diverse perspective on issues
important to NSBP
c) Leads to greater transparency.
It should be noted that these Board members will possess voting
rights.
Please consider these modifications and let us know your thoughts.
When providing your input, please address both topics, i.e., the
change of By-Laws and change in Constitution, and why you are
in favor or against the change of each. Please provide your input
by October 30th, 2010.
Again, the website that we have made available for your com-
ments is: http://nsbp.diversephysics.net
Sincerely,
Peter Delfyett
President, NSBP
page 4
 News
Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD. She will be-
Membership Drive
gin in the Fall 2010, after successfully defend-
B. Freelon and the membership team are involved in ef-
ing her doctoral dissertation at the Perimeter
forts to improve the website experience of those wish-
Institute for Theoretical Physics and the Univer-
ing to start or renew their membership with NSBP. If
sity of Waterloo, Canada. More at: http://www.
you have questions or comments about the membership
perimeterinstitute.ca/index.php?option=com_co
site, please send an email to the Membership Team.
ntent&task=view&id=30&Itemid=72&pi=5017.
Contact: membership@nsbp.org
• Dr. Paul Gueye is a new member of the Advisory
Committee on Physics Education of the American
Dear Members,
Institute of Physics, a new member on the Steer-
ing Committee of the American Physical Society-
We are delighted to announce the new NSBP Member-
American Association of Physics Teachers Graduate
ship Contact Listing. In order to access the member-
Education Conference and a member of the newly
ship list, please login to your account at www.nsbp.org.
formed International Relations Committee Africa
There you will gain access to the current listing of So-
Sub-Committee of the Materials Research Society.
ciety’s membership as well as the last NSBP/NSHP An-
nual Conference attendees. We hope that you will find
this exciting new tool to be valuable in making or re- Jobs
forming professional connections with other physicists. New jobs posting for faculty and stu-
dents can be viewed at: www.nsbp.org/jobs.
Please encourage your colleagues and consider donat-
ing to our organization at http://www.nsbp.org/donate/. Grants
• G4TRAP - Dr. Paul Gueye has been awarded seed
Upcoming Events money that is managed by NSBP and was awarded
SACNAS: 2010 annual conference (www.sacnas.org) by the Science and Technology Mission Office of
2010 US Science and Engineering Festival (www. the French Embassy in Washington DC to start a
usasciencefestival.org/) multidisciplinary research program that involves
the Geant4 Collaboration, the Advanced Laser
Light Source, the French Space Agency, Eastern
Our members in the news
Virginia Medical School, University 1 of Bordeaux,
• Dr. Quinton Williams, Past President of NSBP,
the European Space Agency, NASA Langley, and
has been appointed as the Interim Provost and
members of the IRIS group of the University
Vice-President for Academic Affairs and Stu-
Cheikh Anta Diop. The program aims at tracking
dents Life of Jackson State University. More at:
particulate radiation while going through living
http://www.jsums.edu/jsuoaa/vice-president.htm
cells using ultrafast lasers technology to address
• Dr. Stephen Avery is the new Program Direc-
the underlying physics processes at the DNA
tor for the Master of Medical Physics of the Uni-
level. You can find more at: www.nsbp.org/g4trap.
versity of Pennsylvania as of July 1, 2010. More
at: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/lps/node/1719. • Members grants - NSBP members are encouraged
to include collaboration activities with NSBP in
• Dr. Mark Harvey has been appointed to head
their grants: co-PI, collaborators, conference-
the Health Physics Program in the Phys-
specific activities, NSBP tools (mentoring,
ics Department at Texas Southern Uni-
social networking, K-12 outreach, etc.).
versity. More at: http://physics.tsu.edu/.
Such initiatives will considerably impact our
• Chanda Prescod-Weinstein has been awarded
organization by leveraging our productive national
a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellowship in
activities. For inquiries, email: grants@nsbp.org.
the Observational Cosmology Lab at Goddard

NSBP Newsletter - Volume 1 page 5

 Short Highlight Articles
Semiconductor laser diode produces stabilized optical frequency combs
for telecommunications, metrology, signal processing and spectroscopy.
By I. Ozdur, M. Akbulut, N. Hoghoohi, D. Mandridis. S. Ozharar, F. Quinlan, and
P. J. Delfyett
A novel approach to generating a stabilized, phase-locked and coherent set of peri-
odic optical frequency combs enables researchers to develop these sources at a frac-
tion of the cost of conventional solid state and fiber based sources and thus facilitates
their use in a broad range of information, sensing and measurement applications.
The use of lasers in communications, signal processing, test and measurement
systems and spectroscopy has enabled many key advances over the past decades
owing to the wide range of useful characteristics that accompany coherent laser
radiation. Further advances are envisioned by using multiple lasers, each with
differing wavelengths that allow parallel optical channels to increase the measure-
ment and processing capability. Additional functionality is enabled if each op-
tical frequency channel is phase-locked to the other optical channels, i.e., if the
relative phase relation between each wavelength channel is well established and
fixed and not drifting over long times [1]. To achieve a set of frequency combs
with a fixed phase relation, one can use a single continuous wave (cw) laser and
modulation techniques such as amplitude or phase modulation to create sidebands
[2]. Further channels can be added through nonlinear optical interactions such
as four wave mixing. In this approach, the characteristics of the optical frequen-
cy comb, such as frequency stability and linewidth, is completely determined by
the cw laser and the electronic signals applied to the modulators. Alternatively,
one can use mode-locked lasers to generate a frequency comb with a phase co-
herent relationship between each wavelength component. The drawback with
a conventional mode-locked laser is that the frequency comb can drift owing to
both environmental effects and background quantum effects, such as fluctua-
tions in the background spontaneous emission in the gain medium of the laser [3].
Recently, Hansche and co-workers developed a technique that produces a
stabilized optical frequency comb based on a technique that requires a mode-locked
laser to possess an octave of optical spectra [4]. A salient feature of this approach is
that the frequencies of optical comb can be generated on an absolute frequency grid,
i.e., the optical frequencies are precisely known to exist at exact multiples of the
pulse repetition rate of the laser. A drawback, however is that the laser must possess
an octave of optical bandwidth, and generally, the pulse repetition frequency is suf-
ficiently low that it is difficult to have access to the individual comb components,
owing to their relative close spacing. This feature of the close optical frequency
spacing then makes the optical source difficult to employ in commercial applica-
tions, such as wavelength division multiplexed optical communication networks.
Our work has focused on developing an optical source that produces
a set of widely spaced optical frequencies compared to the octave spanning ap-
proach so it becomes suitable for a broad range of communication and signal pro-
cessing applications without the need of an octave of bandwidth, and with higher
spectral purity and stability of the cw modulated approach. The approach is also
self-referencing in that the optical frequency comb is reference to a secondary
optical standard, such as a high-Q etalon. To achieve the wide optical channel
spacing and high spectral purity, we engineer the optical cavity so that the gen-
erated optical frequency comb has wide channel spacing and simultaneously a
very narrow linewidth for each “tooth” of the frequency comb. These charac-
teristics allow the source to possess very low noise, and possess excellent spec-
tral purity for each comb component. In addition, our approach can be performed
using any gain medium, e.g., semiconductor, so that the produced comb can be
placed anywhere within the optical spectrum, e.g., uv, visible, near infrared, etc.
To achieve a stabilized comb of coherent, phase-locked optical fre-
quencies, we engineer the optical cavity to possess wide mode spacing and nar-
row linewidth. This is achieved by employing a nested cavity configuration that
combines two cavities, where the main cavity has a finesse of 100 and a free
spectral range of ~ 5.6 MHz, and a secondary internal cavity with a finesse of
1000 and a free spectral range of 10.287 GHz. The combined cavities gener-
ate a frequency comb with a spacing determined by the internal cavity, and in-
dividual narrow comb linewidths defined by the main cavity. The free spectral
range of the secondary cavity also defines the laser’s pulse repetition frequency.
The laser system schematic is shown in Fig. 1. The system may be regarded in
two parts; the actively mod-locked laser cavity, and the Pound-Drever-Hall op-
tical stabilization loop. A dispersion compensating fiber section of 3.5 meters
is included to reduce the cavity dispersion. Active mode-locking is achieved
NSBP Newsletter - Volume 1
via loss modulation using a Mach-Zehnder style modulator at 10.287 GHz. The
driving signal to the modulator is obtained from an ultra low noise oscillator.
The purpose of the internal cavity Fabry Perot etalon (FPE) is two-
fold. First, the inclusion of the etalon allows only a single phase locked mode
group, or supermode, to lase. Without the inclusion of the etalon, ~1830 inter-
leaved supermodes will compete, and the resulting random fluctuations in ampli-
tude and phase will disturb the output pulse train. This noise manifests itself in
the timing and amplitude noise spectra as a series of noise spurs, called super-
mode noise, at multiples of the cavity fundamental frequency (5.6 MHz in this
case). Also, the simultaneous lasing of different optical supermodes precludes
the use of a single phase locked frequency comb with multigigahertz spacing. In
the frequency domain, the FPE may be considered as a periodic bandpass filter
that selects a single optical supermode. Without stabilization of the laser cav-
ity, however, environmental influences will cause the optical frequencies to drift
relative to the transmission peaks of the FPE. These frequency fluctuations will
destabilize the mode-locking. The modes of the laser cavity are therefore stabi-
lized to the FPE with the Pound-Drever-Hall (PDH) laser frequency stabilization
method. The PDH stabilization loop uses the FPE to detect small changes to the
optical frequencies of the laser to create an error signal that, after conditioning by
a proportional gain-integration-differentiation (PID) controller, is fed back into a
piezoelectric actuator to compensate for the frequency change. Thus supermode
suppression and optical frequency stabilization are achieved simultaneously with
a single intracavity FPE. The resulting performance of this laser produces a
spectrally flat stabilized optical frequency comb of ~ 200 comb components on
a 10.24 GHz grid. The individual comb linewidth is <500Hz with a stability of
~150 kHz, and has >50dB contrast. The generated periodic pulse train has an over-
all timing jitter (1 Hz to 100 MHz) of ~ 3 femtoseconds, with an intensity noise
of 0.023%. To our knowledge, this is the lowest jitter multi-gigahertz stabilized
optical comb source. Owing to its well defined stable optical comb and low phase
noise this laser has applications in photonic analog to digital conversion, coher-
ent communication, arbitrary waveform generation and optical clock distribution.
To realize the potential processing speeds and accuracy that
photonics promises, the use of stabilized phase coherent optical fre-
quency combs is a step toward that vision. Our work shows that the gen-
eration of stabilized optical frequency combs can be obtained with excel-
lent stability without the need of octave spanning spectra with the cost
effectiveness, electrical efficiency, and compactness of semiconductor diode lasers.
Laser Cavity
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References
1. P. J. Delfyett, S. Gee, M. Choi, H. Izadpanah, W. Lee, S. Ozharar, F. Quinlan,
T. Yilmaz, “Optical Frequency Combs from Semiconductor Lasers and Ap-
plications in Ultra-wideband Signal Processing and Communications, IEEE
Journal of Lightwave Technology, Vol. 24, No. 7, pp. 2701-2719, (2006).
2. Sarper S. Ozharar, F. Quinlan, I. Ozdur, S. Gee, P. J. Delfyett, “Ultraf-
lat Optical Comb Generation by Phase-Only Modulation of Continuous-
Wave Light,” IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett., Vol. 20, No. 1, 36-38 (2008).
3. S. Gee, S. Ozharar, F. Quinlan, J. J. Plant, P. W. Juodawlkis, and P. J. Delfyett, “Self
stabilization of an actively mode-locked semiconductor based fiber ring laser
for ultra-low jitter”, IEEE Photon. Tech. Lett., Vol. 19, No. 7, 498-500 (2007).
4. J. Reichert, R. Holzwarth, T. Udem, and T. W. Hänsch, “Measuring the frequen-
cy of light with mode-locked lasers,” Opt. Commun., vol. 172, p. 59, (1999).
page 6