Atomic Physics
Only bosonic molecular species have been directly laser cooled to date, primarily due to an abundance of bosonic isotopes in nature and to their simpler hyperfine structure. Fermionic molecules provide new opportunities for ultracold…
The accurate determination of atom numbers is an ubiquitous problem in the field of ultracold atoms. For modest atom numbers, absolute calibration techniques are available, however, for large numbers and high densities, the available…
We studied the effect of nuclear-quadrupole interactions on the field-free impulsive alignment of different asymmetric-top molecules. Our analysis is focused on the influence of the hyperfine- and rotational-energy-level structures. These…
We propose and demonstrate a novel method for measuring the polarization direction of a microwave electric field in a single measurement using a Rydberg atom-based mixer with two orthogonally polarized local microwave electric fields.…
Understanding molecular state evolution is central to many disciplines, including molecular dynamics, precision measurement, and molecule-based quantum technology. Details of the evolution are obscured when observing a statistical ensemble…
Modern applications of atomic physics, including the determination of frequency standards, and the analysis of astrophysical spectra, require prediction of atomic properties with exquisite accuracy. For complex atomic systems,…
The helium atom, with one nucleus and two electrons, is a prototypical system to study quantum many-body dynamics. Doubly-excited states, or quantum states in which both electrons are excited by one photon, are showcase scenarios of…
We investigate the photoionization dynamics of atoms subjected to intense, ultrashort laser pulses through the use of quantum trajectories. This method provides a unique and consistent framework for examining electron dynamics within a…
Optically pumped magnetometers (OPMs) are revolutionising the task of magnetic-field sensing due to their extremely high sensitivity combined with technological improvements in miniaturisation which have led to compact and portable devices.…
We measure the energy-differential cross sections for collisional excitation of the soft X-ray electric-dipole K$\alpha$ ($x+y+w$) emission from He-like oxygen (O VII), using an electron beam ion trap. Values near their excitation…
For a hydrogen atom subject to a constant magnetic field, we report a numerical realization of the two-dimensional Non-Linearization Procedure (NLP) to estimate the accuracy of the variational energy associated with a given trial function.…
We present precise, sub-wavelength optical intensity measurement using a single trapped $^{87}$Rb atom as a sensor. The intensity is measured by the scalar ac Stark shift it produces on the $F=1 \rightarrow F'=2$ hyperfine transition of the…
We propose diatomic molecules built from gold and carbon-group atoms as promising candidates for optical cycling and precision measurements. We show that this class of molecules (AuX, X = C, Si, Ge, Sn, Pb) features laser-accessible…
We propose In-like Pr10+ as a candidate for the development of a high-accuracy optical clock with high sensitivity to a time variation of the fine-structure constant, (\dot alpha}/alpha, as well as favorable experimental systematics. We…
We report the measurement of ultrafast relaxation dynamics of excited states of carbon dioxide molecule using time-resolved pump-probe photoelectron spectroscopy. Neutral ground state carbon dioxide is excited to $nd\sigma_g$ Henning sharp…
The demand for efficient preparation methods for dual-species ion crystals is rapidly expanding across quantum technology and fundamental physics applications with trapped ions. We present a deterministic and efficient technique to produce…
We present a two-state Kalman estimator of gravity acceleration and evaluate its performance by numerical simulations and post-measurement demonstration with real-world atomic gravimetry. We show that the estimator-enhanced gravimetry…
Present-day state-of-the-art ab initio many-body calculations on f-block containing cold molecules heavily focus on perturbative approaches for spin-orbit coupling and exclude a substantial part of the atomic transitions in the $f$- and…
We report experimental measurements showing how one can combine quantum interference and thermal Doppler shifts at room temperature to detect weak magnetic fields. We pump ${}^{87}$Rb atoms to a highly-excited, Rydberg level using a probe…
In attempts to unify the four known fundamental forces in a single quantum-consistent theory, it is suggested that Lorentz symmetry may be broken at the Planck scale. Here we search for Lorentz violation at the low-energy limit by comparing…