Mathieu Durand

Mathieu Durand earned the degree of Engineer at the ”Arts et Metiers” School (ECAM, France) in 2004, starting his work in laser development in collaboration with the ”Laboratoire de Physico-Chimie des Matériaux Luminescents” (LPCML, France).

He earned his M.S. in Atomic Physics at the University of Lyon (France) and continued to complete his Ph.D. in the ”Laboratoire de Spectrométrie Ionique et Moleculaire,” (LASIM, France) working on “Laser stabilization and Spectroscopy with Fabry-Perot interferometer” under the joint direction of Pr. J. Morville and Pr. P. Rairoux. He developed various types of high-sensitive spectroscopy apparatus such as Cavity-Enhanced Absorption Spectroscopy and Cavity Ring Down Spectroscopy for trace detections. He showed the advantage of optical feedback technique to stabilize the very popular, widespread, low cost diode lasers. He wrote publications on the use of such a system to improve the resolution in measurements of induced anisotropy in atomic gases to the shot noise limit.

He is now continuing his research on the use of Fabry-Perot interferometry for highly demanding metrological and fundamental problems as a guest researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (Gaithersburg, MD) under the joint direction of Dr. J. Lawall and Dr. Y. Wang. For the new standard of electrical capacitance he developed state of the art picometer accuracy mechanical displacement metrology, linking optical measurements to an atomic time standard using a fiber laser frequency comb. He is experimentally investigating various approaches to couple micromechanical systems to optical cavities in order to optically monitor, cool, and control their motion to bring these macroscopic systems toward the quantum limit and explore applications in quantum science and measurement.