Related papers: Microscopic Lensing by a Dense, Cold Atomic Sample
We use two-dimensional transverse laser cooling to produce an ultracold beam of YbF molecules. Through experiments and numerical simulations, we study how the cooling is influenced by the polarization configuration, laser intensity, laser…
Surveys with submillimetre telescopes are revealing large numbers of gravitationally lensed high-redshift sources. I describe how, in practice, these lensed systems could be simultaneously used to estimate the values of cosmological…
The measurement and characterization of the lensing of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is key goal of the current and next generation of CMB experiments. We perform a case study of a three-channel balloon-borne CMB experiment…
We have achieved stimulated laser cooling of thermal rubidium atomic beams on a silicon chip. Following pre-collimation via a silicon microchannel array, we perform beam brightening via a blue-detuned optical molasses. Owing to the small…
Trapping of single ultracold atoms is an important tool for applications ranging from quantum computation and communication to sensing. However, most experimental setups, while very precise and versatile, can only be operated in specialized…
Gravitational microlensing is a robust tool to detect and directly measure the abundance and mass of any kind of compact objects, either in our galaxy or in the extragalatic domain. On basis to generic, broadly applicable arguments, it is…
The study of light lensed by cosmic matter has yielded much information about astrophysical questions. Observations are explained using geometrical optics following a ray-based description of light. After deflection the lensed light…
The standard light curve of a microlensing event provides only two constraints on the six unknown parameters of the lens. We show that narrow-band photometry during a microlensing event of a giant star can in addition determine the angular…
Modelling of the weak lensing of the CMB will be crucial to obtain correct cosmological parameter constraints from forthcoming precision CMB anisotropy observations. The lensing affects the power spectrum as well as inducing…
We present the first results of the analysis of data collected during the 1998-99 observational campaign at the 1.3 meter McGraw-Hill Telescope, towards the Andromeda galaxy (M31), aimed to the detection of gravitational microlensing…
Most experiments with ultracold atoms in optical lattices have contact interactions, and therefore operate at high densities of around one atom per site to observe the effect of strong interactions. Strong ranged interactions can be…
We report direct, time-resolved observations of single-photon superradiance in a highly extended, elliptical sample of cold 87Rb atoms. The observed rapid decay rate is accompanied by its counterpart, the cooperative Lamb shift. The rate of…
Absorption microscopy is a powerful technique, enabling the detection of single non- fluorescent molecules at room temperature. So far, the molecular absorption has been probed optically via the attenuation of a probing laser. The…
Line-of-sight effects in strong gravitational lensing have long been treated as a nuisance. However, it was recently proposed that the line-of-sight shear could be a cosmological observable in its own right, if it is not degenerate with…
Microlensing events provide a unique way to detect and measure the masses of isolated, non-luminous objects, particularly dark stellar remnants. Under certain conditions, it is possible to measure the mass of these objects using photometry…
Compact dark matter has been efficiently constrained in the M <~ 10 M_sun mass range by null searches for microlensing of stars in nearby galaxies. Here we propose to probe the mass range M >~ 10 M_sun by seeking echoes in gamma-ray-burst…
Astrometric observations of microlensing events were originally proposed to determine the lens proper motion with which the physical parameters of lenses can be better constrained. In this proceeding, we demonstrate that besides this…
We report on the first results from a large-scale observing campaign aiming to use astrometric microlensing to detect and place limits on the mass of single objects, including stellar remnants. We used the Hubble Space Telescope to monitor…
The anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) provide our best laboratory for testing models of the formation and evolution of large-scale structure. The rich features in the cosmic microwave background anisotropy spectrum, in…
We model weak gravitational lensing of light by large-scale structure using ray tracing through N-body simulations. The method is described with particular attention paid to numerical convergence. We investigate some of the key…