Cold-Atom Lab in a Box

The ColdQuanta miniMOT atom trap

I was quoted in a recent Photonics Spectra article “Cold-Atom Lab in a Box“. The article describes the new Rubidium miniMOT available from ColdQuanta. My Photonics and Quantum Optics Lab at Pacific University was among their first customers. We’ve really enjoyed being involved with the early stages of this product and look forward to contributing to MOT research at the undergraduate (and perhaps high school) level.

For pictures of our trap in operation, see my earlier post “MOT!“. We have done a variety of experiments and have trapped atoms in several different geometries since then. More details are described in the talk given by Simone Carpenter at the Northwest APS section meeting: Off-the-shelf atom trapping [PDF] and the corresponding poster Off-the-shelf atom trapping.

Please feel free to contact me with any questions.

Carrier-frequency dependence of a step-modulated pulse propagating through a weakly dispersive single narrow-resonance absorber

Our article on optical precursors is out now, visit the abstract at:

Carrier-frequency dependence of a step-modulated pulse propagating through a weakly dispersive single narrow-resonance absorber

Near a narrow resonance, an optical pulse can pass through a strongly-absorbing atomic vapor for the first few nanoseconds. The part of the pulse that makes it through the material is called a precursor. Our paper explores the form of the precursors as the carrier frequency is tuned off resonance.

Experimentally obtained transient transmission intensity (black solid lines) compared with two theoretical analysis: the asymptotic analysis (red dotted lines), and the weakly dispersive narrow resonance (blue dashed lines). Transient transmission taken near the 4S1/2 (F = 1) ↔ 4P1/2 (F = 2) transition for (a) ∆ = ∆(1) ∼ 5δ, (b) ∆ = ∆(2) ∼ δ, and (c) ∆ = ∆(3) ∼ 0.