Related papers: Photoassociation inside an optical dipole trap: ab…
We report the first observation of a non-dipole transition in an ultra-cold atomic vapor. We excite the 3P-4P electric quadrupole (E2) transition in $^{23}$Na confined in a Magneto-Optical Trap(MOT), and demonstrate its application to…
Atomic comagnetometers, which measure the spin precession frequencies of overlapped species simultaneously, are widely applied to search for exotic spin-dependent interactions. Here we propose and implement an all-optical single-species Cs…
We report on cooling of an atomic cesium gas closely above an evanescent-wave atom mirror. At high densitities, optical cooling based on inelastic reflections is found to be limited by a density-dependent excess temperature and trap loss…
We propose a new spectroscopic method for measuring weak transitions in cold and trapped atoms, which exploits the long interaction times and tight confinement offered by dark optical traps together with an electron shelving technique to…
Heavy polar molecules can be used to measure the electric dipole moment of the electron, which is a sensitive probe of physics beyond the Standard Model. The value is determined by measuring the precession of the molecule's spin in a plane…
Optical trapping techniques are an efficient way to probe limited quantities of rare isotopes. In order to achieve the highest possible measurement precision, it is critical to optimize the optical trapping efficiency. This work presents…
We demonstrate a simple scheme to achieve fast, runaway evaporative cooling of optically trapped atoms by tilting the optical potential with a magnetic field gradient. Runaway evaporation is possible in this trap geometry due to the weak…
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 characterize the anisotropic differential ac-Stark shift for the Dy $626$ nm intercombination transition, induced in a far-detuned $1070$ nm optical dipole trap, and observe the existence of a "magic polarization" for which the…
We trap cold, ground-state, argon atoms in a deep optical dipole trap produced by a build-up cavity. The atoms, which are a general source for the sympathetic cooling of molecules, are loaded in the trap by quenching them from a cloud of…
Understanding collisions between ultracold molecules is crucial for making stable molecular quantum gases and harnessing their rich internal degrees of freedom for quantum engineering. Transient complexes can strongly influence collisional…
An in-trap decay spectroscopy setup has been developed and constructed for use with the TITAN facility at TRIUMF. The goal of this device is to observe weak electron-capture (EC) branching ratios for the odd-odd intermediate nuclei in the…
Direct frequency-comb spectroscopy is used to probe the absolute frequencies of $6S_{1/2}$-$8S_{1/2}$ two-photon transitions of atomic cesium in hot vapor environment. By utilizing the coherent control method of temporally splitting the…
We have produced ultracold heteronuclear KRb molecules by the process of photoassociation in a two-species magneto-optical trap. Following decay of the photoassociated KRb*, the molecules are detected using two-photon ionization and…
We have observed short-range photoassociation of LiRb to the two lowest vibrational states of the $d\,^3\Pi$ potential. These $d\,^3\Pi$ molecules then spontaneously decay to vibrational levels of the $a^3\,\Sigma^+$ state with generation…
The efficiency of optical trapping is determined by the atomic dynamic dipole polarizability, whose real and imaginary parts are associated with the potential energy and photon-scattering rate respectively. In this article we develop a…
We demonstrate Feshbach optimized photoassociation (FOPA) into the $0_{g}^{-} (5$S$_{1/2}+5$P$_{1/2}$) state in $^{85}$Rb$_{2}$. FOPA uses the enhancement of the amplitude of the initial atomic scattering wave function due to a Feshbach…
We report phase-coherent Doppler detection of optical dipole forces using large ion crystals in a Penning trap. The technique is based on laser Doppler velocimetry using a cycling transition in $^{9}$Be$^{+}$ near 313 nm and the…
We show that the inclusion of counter-rotating terms, usually dropped in evaluations of interaction of an electric dipole of a two level atom with the electromagnetic field, leads to significant modifications of trapping potential in the…
Magneto-optical trapping forces for molecules are far weaker than for alkali atoms because the photon scattering rate is reduced when there are multiple ground states, and because of optical pumping into dark states. The force is further…