Related papers: Doppler cooling and trapping on forbidden transiti…
We demonstrate demagnetization cooling of a gas of ultracold $^{52}$Cr atoms. Demagnetization is driven by inelastic dipolar collisions which couple the motional degrees of freedom to the spin degree. By that kinetic energy is converted…
Ultracold sodium atoms have been trapped inside a hollow-core optical fiber. The atoms are transferred from a free space optical dipole trap into a trap formed by a red-detuned gaussian light mode confined to the core of the fiber. We show…
We investigate the dynamics of cavity cooling of a single ion beyond the Lamb-Dicke regime and demonstrate a cooling limit of approximately 50% of the Doppler temperature using a high finesse cavity for the first time. We also study the…
We realize the first magneto-optical trap of an atom in main group III of the Periodic Table. Our atom of choice (indium) does not have a transition out of its ground state suitable for laser cooling; therefore, laser cooling is performed…
A major motivation for cold atom experiments is the search for quantum ground states such as antiferromagnets and d-wave superfluids. The primary obstacle to this task is the difficulty of cooling to sufficiently low temperatures. We…
We demonstrate simultaneous deceleration and trapping of a cold atomic and molecular mixture. This is the first step towards studies of cold atom-molecule collisions at low temperatures as well as application of sympathetic cooling. Both…
We describe the application of displaced, or misaligned, beams in a mirror-based magneto-optical trap (MOT) to enable portable and miniaturized atom chip experiments, where optical access is limited to a single window. Two different…
We demonstrate the possibility of energy-selective removal of cold atoms from a tight optical trap by means of parametric excitation of the trap vibrational modes. Taking advantage of the anharmonicity of the trap potential, we selectively…
We present a dual isotope magneto-optical trap (MOT), simultaneous sub-Doppler laser cooling, and magnetic trapping of a spin-polarized $^{39}$K-$^{40}$K Bose-Fermi mixture realized in a single-chamber setup with an unenriched potassium…
Cooling down a trapped ion into its motional ground state is a central step for trapped ions based quantum information processing. State of the art cooling schemes often work under a set of optimal cooling conditions derived analytically…
Nonneutral plasmas can be trapped for long times by means of combined electric and magnetic fields. Adiabatic cooling is achieved by slowly decreasing the trapping frequency and letting the plasma occupy a larger volume. We develop a fully…
Recently, laser cooling methods have been extended from atoms to molecules. The complex rotational and vibrational energy level structure of molecules makes laser cooling difficult, but these difficulties have been overcome and molecules…
We present experimental techniques and results related to the optimization and characterization of our nanofiber-based atom trap [Vetsch et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 203603 (2010)]. The atoms are confined in an optical lattice which is…
The term `laser cooling' is applied to the use of optical means to cool the motional energies of either atoms and molecules, or micromirrors. In the literature, these two strands are kept largely separate; both, however suffer from severe…
Gray molasses is a powerful tool for sub-Doppler laser cooling of atoms to low temperatures. For alkaline atoms, this technique is commonly implemented with cooling lasers which are blue-detuned from either the D1 or D2 line. Here we show…
Based on a real-time measurement of the motion of a single ion in a Paul trap, we demonstrate its electro-mechanical cooling below the Doppler limit by homodyne feedback control (cold damping). The feedback cooling results are well…
Plasma dynamics critically depends on density and temperature, thus well-controlled experimental realizations are essential benchmarks for theoretical models. The formation of an ultracold plasma can be triggered by ionizing a tunable…
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…
Ultra-cold atoms trapped in an optical dipole trap and prepared in a coherent superposition of their hyperfine ground states, decohere as they interact with their environment. We demonstrate than the loss in coherence in an "echo"…
Laser cooled atoms are central to modern precision measurements. They are also increasingly important as an enabling technology for experimental cavity quantum electrodynamics, quantum information processing and matter wave interferometry.…