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Slow Loris is to National Science Foundation As…
by Snow Tempest

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The featured primate-of-the-month on Princeton Electrical Engineering Ph.D candidate Harindran (Hari) Manoharan’s homepage has been, for about a year and a half, the slow loris. The slow loris is a small, furry, nocturnal creature with enormous yellow eyes. It moves at a very slow rate. Manoharan explains that he likes the little primate because “it’s off in its own time zone, its own little world.” The slow loris, he explains, “knows that in maybe half an hour it’s going to get to the end of the branch, but in the meantime he’s just moving along.”

Yes, it’s quirky, but Manoharan, who enjoys writing and considered studying English, music or physics before becoming a prizewinning electrical engineering student, is well aware of the symbolism of his choice of featured primate. The patience of the slow loris seems analogous to the gap between the far-off goals and the immediate precision of Manoharan and the other government-funded academic researchers on his project.

Manoharan, 28, a lanky Oklahoma City native of Sri Lankan ancestry, explains that his team’s research concerns reduced dimensional physics: the behavior of sub-atomic particles in one, two, or even zero dimensions. The research consists in two parts: the construction of the reduced dimensional space in which the electrons move, and the measurement of their actions at a ground state. Both of these goals lie more in the realm of physics than electrical engineering, but developing the processes to research them requires a great deal of electrical engineering.

The project begins with a disc of semiconductor crystal called gallim arsenite. In order for the project to work, it must be conducted in extremely sterile conditions, best assured by performing the whole project in a vacuum. It also involves a process called Molecular Beam Ephitaxy, which takes place in a $1.5 million machine that looks like a diving bell.

The process, Manoharan explains, involves “growing” structures by depositing layers perhaps a single atom thick of semiconductors atop the original disk to produce a single, custom crystal. This process can take three to four days, and must be perfect. Since the engineers can control the thickness of the layers to a single atom, they can create spaces in which electrons can become confined between the layers of atoms. To the electrons, Manoharan says, “it looks like they’re in a two-dimensional world.” For a one-dimensional world, they process the two-dimensional structure until the electrons can only move in a straight line. In one dimension, Manoharan explains, “if you run into someone, you just go back.”

Next, Manohran and his team measure the reactions of the electrons in the reduced dimensions at a ground state. To do this, they reduce the temperature of the system to close to absolute zero. They also place it in a very high magnetic field, up to 500,000 times the magnetic field of the earth. This, Manoharan says, “gives us more information about the states these electrons want to form.”

The goal of the research may be to understand physics at another level, but requires an enormous investment of time and money in developing the technology needed to even study it, and then to produce each experiment. The project’s funding comes from the United States government, mainly from the National Science Foundation (NSF), and also from the Department of Defense and the Army.

Manoharan explains that one possible application of this technology may be in constructing a new kind of computer, one that will not be possible to build for an estimated ten years. As most people know, the size of computer components has become smaller and smaller in the past twenty years. It is possible that within the next ten there will be a quantum computer: one that operates on a sub-atomic level. Manoharan explains that besides being tiny, this computer wouldn’t operate on the yes-or-no binary system of current computers. Some part of the system could exist in a “super-position state,” which Manoharan compares to Schrödinger’s cat, neither dead nor alive but eternally indeterminate within its box. This computer might be able to solve certain kinds of problems better.

Not only is this technology hypothetical, it may not turn out to be practical or practicable. But, Manoharan observes, there is a section of his NSF grant called “infrastructure.” Even if his research does not result in a new paradigm of theoretical physics or a quantum computer, someone else may be able to use the technology he has developed in order to study it for other research projects or applications. As Manoharan observes, “The NSF likes this.” The theoretical research is supported by the practicality of the processes used to study it.

Manoharan prefers to believe that the NSF’s goals are farsighted as well. After all, he observes, “That’s why the NSF is there, to fund fundamental science.” And to people who ask why their tax dollars are used for this, he responds, “I think there’s always a value to research that’s done with fundamental goals in mind, and in order to push back the frontiers of knowledge.”

Like the slow loris, the National Science Foundation and scientists like Manoharan balance the painstaking precision of their immediate actions with future rewards. It’s an example of the way in which American government policies often can more clearly demonstrate value for the expenditure in the sciences that in, say, arts or social service, both of which anticipate deep funding cuts. Of course, the situations are not exactly analogous. Scientific and social infrastructure are different: a Molecular Beam Ephitaxy machine may cost $1.5 million to create, but it doesn’t draw a salary after that. Still, if some of the future-oriented thinking applied to funding engineering research could be applied to some other types of funding programs, we might be able to push back some frontiers in those areas as well.

14 April 1997.
“Politics and the Press” seminar class assignment.