Excited state spatial distributions in a cold strontium gas

This thesis describes the development of a new technique for measuring the spatial distribution of Rydberg atoms in a cold strontium gas. Strontium atoms are cooled and trapped in a magneto-optical trap and coherently excited to Rydberg states in a two-photon, three-level ladder scheme. Several methods of stabilizing the frequency to the cooling transition are discussed and characterized. A frequency stabilization scheme based on electromagnetically-induced transparency for the second laser required for Rydberg excitation is also explained. The Rydberg population dynamics are studied experimentally and modeled using an optical Bloch equation simulation. The divalent nature of strontium allows doubly excited “autoionizing” states to be accessed using resonant optical excitation. These states ionize in subnanosecond timescales, with the ions recorded on a micro-channel plate being proportional to the amount of Rydberg atoms. Translation of an autoionizing laser focused to a waist of 10 μm gives a spatially resolved Rydberg signal. A two-dimensional map of the Rydberg spatial distribution has been made using this autoionizing microscopy technique

Molecular Cloning and Analysis of Tomato Blackring Virus

Tomato blackring virus RNA was reverse transcribed into single-strand complementary DNA. The RNA template was removed by alkaline hydrolysis, and the cDNA was transcribed into a double-stranded structure. The remaining single-stranded regions were removed by digestion with S1 nuclease and the recessed 3'-termini converted to a double-stranded structure. The cDNA was fractionated according to size

Characterizing the local vectorial electric field near an atom chip using Rydberg state spectroscopy

We use the sensitive response to electric fields of Rydberg atoms to characterize all three vector components of the local electric field close to an atom-chip surface. We measured Stark-Zeeman maps of $S$ and $D$ Rydberg states using an elongated cloud of ultracold Rubidium atoms ($T\sim2.5$ $\mu$K) trapped magnetically $100$ $\mu$m from the chip surface. The spectroscopy of $S$ states yields a calibration for the generated local electric field at the position of the atoms. The values for different components of the field are extracted from the more complex response of $D$ states to the combined electric and magnetic fields. From the analysis we find residual fields in the two uncompensated directions of $0.0\pm0.2$ V/cm and $1.98\pm0.09$ V/cm respectively. This method also allows us to extract a value for the relevant field gradient along the long axis of the cloud. The manipulation of electric fields and the magnetic trapping are both done using on-chip wires, making this setup a promising candidate to observe Rydberg-mediated interactions on a chip.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figure

Rydberg dressing of a one-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensate

We study the influence of Rydberg-dressed interactions in a one-dimensional (1D) Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). We show that a 1D geometry offers several advantages over a three-dimensional geometry for observing BEC Rydberg dressing. The effects of dressing are studied by investigating collective BEC dynamics after a rapid switch-off of the Rydberg dressing interaction. The results can be interpreted as an effective modification of the s-wave scattering length. We include this modification in an analytical model for the 1D BEC and compare it to numerical calculations of Rydberg dressing under realistic experimental conditions.</p

Signatures of self-organized criticality in an ultracold atomic gas

Self-organized criticality is an elegant explanation of how complex structures emerge and persist throughout nature, and why such structures often exhibit similar scale-invariant properties. Although self-organized criticality is sometimes captured by simple models that feature a critical point as an attractor for the dynamics, the connection to real-world systems is exceptionally hard to test quantitatively. Here we observe three key signatures of self-organized criticality in the dynamics of a driven–dissipative gas of ultracold potassium atoms: self-organization to a stationary state that is largely independent of the initial conditions; scale-invariance of the final density characterized by a unique scaling function; and large fluctuations of the number of excited atoms (avalanches) obeying a characteristic power-law distribution. This work establishes a well-controlled platform for investigating self-organization phenomena and non-equilibrium criticality, with experimental access to the underlying microscopic details of the system