Related papers: Measurements and analysis of response function of …
We study theoretically the behavior of laser-cooled calcium monofluoride (CaF) molecules in an optical molasses and magneto-optical trap (MOT), and compare our results to recent experiments. We use multi-level optical Bloch equations to…
The position response of a particle subjected to a perturbation is of general interest in physics. We study the modification of the position response function of an ensemble of cold atoms in a magneto-optical trap in the presence of tunable…
In red-detuned magneto-optical traps (MOTs) of molecules, sub-Doppler heating competes with Doppler cooling, resulting in high temperature and low density. A solution is offered by the blue-detuned MOT where sub-Doppler cooling dominates…
We present an experimental, numerical, and analytical study of strontium magneto-optical trap (MOT) loading from a cold atomic beam in a configuration optimized for high numerical aperture optical tweezers. Our approach orients the beam…
We analyze a method of compressing a cloud of cold atoms by dynamic control of a far off resonance optical lattice. We show that by reducing the lattice spacing either continuously or in discrete steps while cooling the atoms with optical…
We have studied a general technique for laser cooling a cloud of polarized trapped atoms down to the Doppler temperature. A one-dimensional optical molasses using polarized light cools the axial motional degree of freedom of the atoms in…
We demonstrate rapid loading of a magneto-optical trap (MOT) of cadmium atoms from a pulsed cryogenic helium buffer gas beam, overcoming strong photoionization losses. Using the $ ^1S_0 \rightarrow{} ^1P_1 $ transition at 229 nm, we capture…
We report on an apparatus for cooling and trapping of neutral dysprosium. We characterize and optimize the performance of our Zeeman slower and 2D molasses cooling of the atomic beam by means of Doppler spectroscopy on a 136 kHz broad…
This study introduces a novel method to investigate in-situ light transport within optically thick ensembles of cold atoms, exploiting the internal structure of alkaline-earth metals. A method for creating an optical excitation at the…
We realize laser cooling and trapping of titanium (Ti) atoms in a mangeto-optical trap (MOT). While Ti does not possess a transition suitable for laser cooling out of its $\mathrm{3d^24s^2}$ $\mathrm{a^3F}$ ground term, there is such a…
Laser cooling is used to produce ultracold atoms and molecules for quantum science and precision measurement applications. Molecules are more challenging to cool than atoms due to their vibrational and rotational internal degrees of…
We introduce a new technique to probe the properties of an interacting cold atomic gas that can be viewed as a dynamical compressibility measurement. We apply this technique to the study of the superfluid to Mott insulator quantum phase…
In the context of non-equilibrium statistical physics, the position response of a particle, coupled to a bath, subjected to an external force is a topic of broad interest. A topic of further interest is two distinguishable sets of…
In the past, light-assisted cold collisions between laser cooled atoms have been widely studied in magneto-optical atom traps (MOTs). We describe here theoretical studies of dynamical interactions, specifically cold collisions, between…
Recent experiments have demonstrated direct cooling and trapping of diatomic and triatomic molecules in magneto-optical traps (MOTs). However, even the best molecular MOTs to date still have density $10^{-5}$ times smaller than in typical…
We study a harmonically confined atomic gas which is subjected to an additional external potential such as an optical lattice. Using a linear response formulation, we determine the response of the gas to a small, time-dependent displacement…
Numerical methods are developed to simulate the dynamics of atoms in a Magneto-Optic Trap (MOT), based on the fluid description of ultracold gases under laser cooling and magnetic trapping forces. With this model, equilibrium hydrostatic…
Transverse pattern formation in an optical cavity containing a cloud of cold two-level atoms is discussed. We show that density modulation becomes the dominant mechanism as the atomic temperature is reduced. Indeed, for low but achievable…
We consider a measurement of the position of a spot painted on the surface of a trapped nano-optomechanical sphere. The measurement extracts information about the position of the spot and in doing so measures a combination of the…
We present a quantum theory of a magneto-optical trap (MOT) from first principles based on the quantum kinetic equation for the atomic density matrix with taking into account the recoil effects caused by the interaction of atoms with the…