Atomic & Molecular PhysicsSyndicate content

Cindy Regal

Cindy Regal <br /> Credit: Greg Kuebler

 JILA welcomed its newest Associate Fellow Cindy Regal in early January of 2010 — about the time Instrument Shop staffers Hans Green and Ariel Paul were putting the finishing touches on her new laboratory. Graduate student Adam Kaufman and undergraduate student Ian Caldwell worked several months with Green and Paul on setting up the lab and experiments. Read more »

Dense Atomic Vapors

The JILA MONSTR (Multidimensional Optical Nonlinear SpecTrometer). Credit: Greg

Steve Cundiff studies the behavior of dense atomic vapors at temperatures ranging from 300-800 °C. In his group’s initial experiments, researchers directed two or three excitation laser pulses into dense vapors of potassium atoms (39K). The group used a reflection cell to study the signal beam generated by coherent interaction between the excitation pulses in the vapor. Read more »

Ultracold Atoms

Fermionic condensate Credit: Deborah Jin Group
Bose-Einstein Condensation. Credit: Eric Cornell Group
Double condensate composed of both 87Rb and 85Rb atoms, with 85Rb shown on the t
Atom Chip atop a BEC Cell with Laser Beams. Credit: Evan Salim & Dana Anderson
Atom Chip Technology. (Clockwise from top right) circular atom waveguide, UHV-co
Momentum distribution of 40K atoms throughout the BCS-BEC continuum Credit: Jin
Energetic atoms from quasi-bound p-wave Feshbach molecules fly apart after an
Arrangement of cold atoms in a plaquette. Credit: Ana Maria Rey
Rf photons probe an ultracold gas of atoms, causing some atoms to leave the trap
If a rapid change in the magnetic field surrounding a gas cloud of 87Rb and 40K
Credit: Ana Maria Rey
Sr Optical Atomic Clock Credit: Jun Ye Group
New quantum laser design in which a "lasing" photon interacts with a chain of Sr
Optical Lattice Credit: NIST
Large-vortex lattice in a Bose-Einstein condensate. Credit: Eric Cornell group
Optical-lattice quantum computer based on Sr atoms Credit: Greg Kuebler
An atomtronics battery. Credit: Brian Seaman
An atomtronics transistor on an atom chip. Credit: Evan Salim & Dana Anderson

  Fermionic condensate Credit: Deborah Jin Group

JILAns Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman began their ground-breaking research in the field of ultracold matter in 1990. As described in The Wonderful World of Ultracold, this early work led to the Nobel Prize in Physics for both scientists. Today, the Institute continues its trendsetting research into ultracold atoms and molecules, seeking insights into superfluidity, superconductivity, quantum behavior control, the role of quantum processes in our everyday world, and the development of quantum devices. Read more »

The BEC Transporter

A color schematic of the Anderson group’s new two-chamber vacuum cell and its pl
The vacuum side of an atom microchip. Credit: Evan Salim

The Dana Z. Anderson group has developed a microchip-based system that not only rapidly produces Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs), but also is compact and transportable. The complete working system easily fits on an average-sized rolling cart. This technology opens the door to using ultracold matter in gravity sensors, atomic clocks, inertial sensors, as well as in electric- and magnetic-field sensing. Research associate Dan Farkas demonstrated the new system at the American Physical Society’s March 2010 meeting, held in Portland, Oregon, March 15–19. Read more »

Close Encounters of the Third Dimension

Researchers at UCLA took single-wavelength X-ray data from the Kapteyn/Murnane g
Comparison of image reconstructions of a 7 µm stick girl figure with x-ray and s

    When Richard Sandberg and his colleagues in the Kapteyn/Murnane group developed a lensless x-ray microscope in 2007 (see JILA Light & Matter, Winter 2008), they were delighted with their ability to obtain a stick-figure image (below) that was comparable in resolution to one from a scanning-electron microscope. However, they didn’t know yet that this was not all they had accomplished. Their collaborators on this work, Professor John Miao and undergraduate Kevin Raines at UCLA’s California NanoSystems Institute, took the Kapteyn/Murnane group’s experimental data and performed a three-dimensional (3D) image reconstruction of the stick figure. Read more »

The Magnetic Heart of the Matter

Reflection of a burst of X-ray photons (purple) off a compound consisting of nic

Imagine being able to observe how a magnet works at the nanoscale level, both in space and in time. For instance, how fast does a nanoscale magnetic material switch its orientation? What if understanding magnetic switching might lead to the use of the spin of an electron rather than its charge to create new devices? A new method for investigating such possibilities is just beginning to be explored. Read more »

Freeze Frame

Image of 39,000 ultralow-temperature KRb molecules in their ground state taken 2

The cold-molecule collaboration has developed a method for directly imaging ultracold ground-state KRb molecules. Their old method required the transfer of ultracold KRb molecules into a Feshbach state, which is sensitive to electric and magnetic fields. Thus researchers had to turn off the electric field and keep the magnetic field at a fixed value during the imaging process. However, the team recently began to probe the influence of changing electric and magnetic fields on the behavior of ultralow-temperature KRb molecules. Consequently, the researchers wanted to directly image ultralow-temperature KRb molecules in the ground state. However, the complex energy-level structure of molecules made the task of directly imaging molecules much more challenging than for atoms. Read more »