176 research outputs found
Phase diagram for a Bose-Einstein condensate moving in an optical lattice
The stability of superfluid currents in a system of ultracold bosons was
studied using a moving optical lattice. Superfluid currents in a very weak
lattice become unstable when their momentum exceeds 0.5 recoil momentum.
Superfluidity vanishes already for zero momentum as the lattice deep reaches
the Mott insulator(MI) phase transition. We study the phase diagram for the
disappearance of superfluidity as a function of momentum and lattice depth
between these two limits. Our phase boundary extrapolates to the critical
lattice depth for the superfluid-to-MI transition with 2% precision. When a
one-dimensional gas was loaded into a moving optical lattice a sudden
broadening of the transition between stable and unstable phases was observed.Comment: 4 figure
Magnetic Field Tomography
Neutral atoms may be trapped via the interaction of their magnetic dipole
moment with magnetic field gradients. One of the possible schemes is the
cloverleaf trap. It is often desirable to have at hand a fast and precise
technique for measuring the magnetic field distribution. We introduce a novel
diagnostic tool for instantaneous imaging the equipotential lines of a magnetic
field within a region of space (the vacuum recipient) that is not accessible to
massive probes. Our technique is based on spatially resolved observation of the
fluorescence emitted by a hot beam of sodium atoms crossing a thin slice of
resonant laser light within the magnetic field region to be investigated. The
inhomogeneous magnetic field spatially modulates the resonance condition
between the Zeeman-shifted hyperfine sublevels and the laser light and
therefore the amount of scattered photons. We demonstrate this technique by
mapping the field of our cloverleaf trap in three dimensions under various
conditions.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figure
Raman Spectroscopy of Mott insulator states in optical lattices
We propose and analyse a Raman spectroscopy technique for probing the
properties of quantum degenerate bosons in the ground band of an optical
lattice. Our formalism describes excitations to higher vibrational bands and is
valid for deep lattices where a tight-binding approach can be applied to the
describe the initial state of the system. In sufficiently deep lattices,
localized states in higher vibrational bands play an important role in the
system response, and shifts in resonant frequency of excitation are sensitive
to the number of particles per site. We present numerical results of this
formalism applied to the case of a uniform lattice deep in the Mott insulator
regime.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure
Radiative lifetime measurements of rubidium Rydberg states
We have measured the radiative lifetimes of ns, np and nd Rydberg states of
rubidium in the range 28 < n < 45. To enable long-lived states to be measured,
our experiment uses slow-moving Rb atoms in a magneto-optical trap (MOT). Two
experimental techniques have been adopted to reduce random and systematic
errors. First, a narrow-bandwidth pulsed laser is used to excite the target
Rydberg state, resulting in minimal shot-to-shot variation in the initial state
population. Second, we monitor the target state population as a function of
time delay from the laser pulse using a short-duration, millimetre-wave pulse
that is resonant with a one- or two-photon transition. We then selectively
field ionize the monitor state, and detect the resulting electrons with a
micro-channel plate. This signal is an accurate mirror of the target state
population, and is uncontaminated by contributions from other states which are
populated by black body radiation. Our results are generally consistent with
other recent experimental results obtained using a less sensitive method, and
are also in excellent agreement with theory.Comment: 27 pages,6 figure
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