Svetlana Alexandrovna Kotochigova is a Soviet and American physicist whose research involves the theory and simulation of ultracold atoms and ultracold molecules.
[1] She is a research professor of physics at Temple University and a researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.
After short-term positions in Greece, Foundation for research and Technology (IESL),[3] and France, Atomic Energy Commission of France,[4] she came to the US as a guest researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in 1994, and continued at NIST as a research associate beginning in 1997.
[2] Research interests include relativistic quantum theory and its applications, atomic and molecular electronic structure and spectroscopy, QED effects in hydrogen and hydrogen-like ions, ultracold atom-atom interactions and optical lattices, and online atomic and molecular databases.
[5] Kotochigova was elected as a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) in 2011, after a nomination from the APS Division of Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics, "for insightful theoretical description of the formation and control of ultracold molecules in optical trapping potentials".