Related papers: Optical repumping and atom number balancing in a t…
We report on the design, implementation, and performance of a compact two-dimensional magneto-optical trap (2D MOT) for cesium. In a small-volume vacuum chamber, the setup uses cesium dispensers in close proximity to the trapping region of…
We report on the design and characterization of a cold atom source for strontium (Sr) based on a two-dimensional magneto-optical trap (MOT) that is directly loaded from the atom jet of a dispenser. We characterize the atom flux of the…
The coexistence of superfluid and Mott insulator, due to the quadratic confinement potential in current optical lattice experiments, makes the accurate detection of the superfluid-Mott transition difficult. Studying alternative trapping…
We propose a procedure to achieve a complete energy conversion between laser pulses carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM) in a cloud of cold atoms characterized by a double-\Lambda atom-light coupling scheme. A pair of resonant spatially…
We studied light assisted collisions of Tm atoms in a magneto optical trap (MOT) for the first time, working on a weak cooling transition at 530.7 nm $(4f^{13}(^2F^0)6s^2,J=7/2,F=4$ to $4f^{12}(^3H_6)5d_{5/2}6s^2,J=9/2,F=5)$. We observed a…
We study the superfluid-Mott-insulator transition of ultracold bosonic atoms in a one-dimensional optical lattice with a double-well confining trap using the density-matrix renormalization group. At low density, the system behaves similarly…
We demonstrate an atom trap geometry for 87Rb which is capable of producing ultra high atom densities. Reradiation forces, which usually limit high densities, can be avoided in dark spontaneous-force optical traps (dark SPOTs) by sheltering…
We report magneto-optical trapping (MOT) of a polyatomic molecule, calcium monohydroxide (CaOH). The MOT contains $2.0(5)\times 10^4$ CaOH molecules at a peak density of $3.0(8)\times10^{6}$ cm$^{-3}$. CaOH molecules are further sub-Doppler…
Second-stage laser cooling of thulium atoms at the 530.7 nm transition with a natural linewidth of 350 kHz offers an interesting possibility to study different regimes of a magneto-optical trap (MOT). The intermediate value of the spectral…
Active frequency stabilization of a laser to an atomic or molecular resonance underpins many modern-day AMO physics experiments. With a flat background and high signal-to-noise ratio, modulation transfer spectroscopy (MTS) offers an…
We report on a strategy to maximize the number of chromium atoms transferred from a magneto-optical trap into an optical trap through accumulation in metastable states via strong optical pumping. We analyse how the number of atoms in a…
Magneto-optically trapped atoms enable the determination of lifetimes of metastable states and higher lying excited states like the $\rm{5d^{2}~^{3}F_{2}}$ state in barium. The state is efficiently populated by driving strong transitions…
We report three-dimensional trapping of an oxide molecule (YO), using a radio-frequency magneto-optical trap (MOT). The total number of molecules loaded is $\sim$1.5$\times10^4$ , with a temperature of 7(1)~mK. This diversifies the frontier…
We demonstrate the integration of micro-electro-mechanical-systems (MEMS) scanning mirrors as active elements for the local optical pumping of ultra-cold atoms in a magneto-optical trap. A pair of MEMS mirrors steer a focused resonant beam…
Radiative decay from the excited $^1P_1$ state to metastable $^3P_2$ and $^3P_0$ states is expected to limit attainable trapped atomic population in a magneto-optic trap of ytterbium (Yb) atoms. In experiments we have carried out with…
Current dual-frequency magneto-optical traps for ultracold molecules are plagued by sub-Doppler heating effects, making them vastly inferior to standard atomic MOTs. Here we demonstrate theoretically that the sub-Doppler effects in such a…
We present a novel optical cooling scheme that relies on hyperfine dark states to enhance loading and cooling atoms inside deep optical dipole traps. We demonstrate a seven-fold increase in the number of atoms loaded in the conservative…
We report a method for loading cold atoms into an optical trap with high initial phase-space density (PSD). When the trap beam is overlapped with atoms in optical molasses of optimized parameters including large cooling beam detuning…
We present new techniques in cooling 39K atoms using laser light close to the D1 transition. First, a new compressed-MOT configuration is taking advantage of gray molasses type cooling induced by blue-detuned D1 light. It yields an…
We report on the realization of a magneto-optical trap (MOT) for metastable strontium operating on the 2.92 $\mu$m transition between the energy levels $5s5p~^3\mathrm{P}_2$ and $5s4d~^3\mathrm{D}_3$. The strontium atoms are initially…