578 research outputs found
Continuous loading of an electrostatic trap for polar molecules
A continuously operated electrostatic trap for polar molecules is
demonstrated. The trap has a volume of ~0.6 cm^3 and holds molecules with a
positive Stark shift. With deuterated ammonia from a quadrupole velocity
filter, a trap density of ~10^8/cm^3 is achieved with an average lifetime of
130 ms and a motional temperature of ~300 mK. The trap offers good starting
conditions for high-precision measurements, and can be used as a first stage in
cooling schemes for molecules and as a "reaction vessel" in cold chemistry.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures v2: several small improvements, new intr
Trapping of Neutral Rubidium with a Macroscopic Three-Phase Electric Trap
We trap neutral ground-state rubidium atoms in a macroscopic trap based on
purely electric fields. For this, three electrostatic field configurations are
alternated in a periodic manner. The rubidium is precooled in a magneto-optical
trap, transferred into a magnetic trap and then translated into the electric
trap. The electric trap consists of six rod-shaped electrodes in cubic
arrangement, giving ample optical access. Up to 10^5 atoms have been trapped
with an initial temperature of around 20 microkelvin in the three-phase
electric trap. The observations are in good agreement with detailed numerical
simulations.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
A Three Dimensional Lattice of Ion Traps
We propose an ion trap configuration such that individual traps can be
stacked together in a three dimensional simple cubic arrangement. The isolated
trap as well as the extended array of ion traps are characterized for different
locations in the lattice, illustrating the robustness of the lattice of traps
concept. Ease in the addressing of ions at each lattice site, individually or
simultaneously, makes this system naturally suitable for a number of
experiments. Application of this trap to precision spectroscopy, quantum
information processing and the study of few particle interacting system are
discussed.Comment: 4 pages, 4 Figures. Fig 1 appears as a composite of 1a, 1b, 1c and
1d. Fig 2 appears as a composite of 2a, 2b and 2
Dynamic Fabry-Perot cavity stabilization technique for atom-cavity experiments
We present a stabilization technique developed to lock and dynamically tune
the resonant frequency of a moderate finesse Fabry-P\'erot (FP) cavity used in
precision atom-cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED) experiments. Most
experimental setups with active stabilization either operate at one fixed
resonant frequency or use transfer cavities to achieve the ability to tune the
resonant frequency of the cavity. In this work, we present a simple and
cost-effective solution to actively stabilize an optical cavity while achieving
a dynamic tuning range of over 100 MHz with a precision under 1 MHz. Our unique
scheme uses a reference laser locked to an electro-optic modulator (EOM)
shifted saturation absorption spectroscopy (SAS) signal. The cavity is locked
to the PDH error signal obtained from the dip in the reflected intensity of
this reference laser. Our setup provides the feature to efficiently tune the
resonant frequency of the cavity by only changing the EOM drive without
unlocking and re-locking either the reference laser or the cavity. We present
measurements of precision control of the resonant cavity frequency and vacuum
Rabi splitting (VRS) to quantify the stability achieved and hence show that
this technique is suitable for a variety of cavity QED experiments
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