Brief description of our work--what are those guys up to,
anyway?
We study various aspects of atom-photon interactions, such
as collisions between ultra-cold atoms, rectified forces, high precision
spectroscopy and energy level population transfer.
Formerly the lab ran an atomic beam apparatus, employing chirp cooling to load a magneto-optical trap (MOT) in order to study collisions.
Currently Matt Wright works with a Low Velocity Intense Source (LVIS) double MOT, while Bruce works on a cell trap to form a MOT, in which are run experiments involving stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) to put atoms into their second excited state.
In both set-ups the atoms of choice are rubidium.
In 1994 the cell trap was used by Timothy Grove (formerly a post-doc at MIT, now a professor at Purdue-Indiana Univ. at Fort Wayne) and Bruce to test rectified forces in a three level cascade system.
For some basic information on laser cooling and trapping
of atoms, click here.
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