272 research outputs found
Research and development of materials for use as lubricants in a liquid hydrogen environment Final report, Jul. 1964 - Nov. 1965
Lubricant materials for rolling contact bearings operating in liquid hydrogen environmen
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
Cavity-Enhanced Rayleigh Scattering
We demonstrate Purcell-like enhancement of Rayleigh scattering into a single
optical mode of a Fabry-Perot resonator for several thermal atomic and
molecular gases. The light is detuned by more than an octave, in this case by
hundreds of nanometers, from any optical transition, making particle excitation
and spontaneous emission negligible. The enhancement of light scattering into
the resonator is explained quantitatively as an interference effect of light
waves emitted by a classical driven dipole oscillator. Applications of our
method include the sensitive, non-destructive in-situ detection of ultracold
molecules.Comment: v2: 13 pages, 7 figures, small changes to the text, extended
description of the theoretical mode
Avalanches in a Bose-Einstein condensate
Collisional avalanches are identified to be responsible for an 8-fold
increase of the initial loss rate of a large 87-Rb condensate. We show that the
collisional opacity of an ultra-cold gas exhibits a critical value. When
exceeded, losses due to inelastic collisions are substantially enhanced. Under
these circumstances, reaching the hydrodynamic regime in conventional BEC
experiments is highly questionable.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, 1 tabl
Normal-mode spectroscopy of a single bound atom-cavity system
The energy-level structure of a single atom strongly coupled to the mode of a
high-finesse optical cavity is investigated. The atom is stored in an
intracavity dipole trap and cavity cooling is used to compensate for inevitable
heating. Two well-resolved normal modes are observed both in the cavity
transmission and the trap lifetime. The experiment is in good agreement with a
Monte Carlo simulation, demonstrating our ability to localize the atom to
within at a cavity antinode.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
Collisional effects in the formation of cold guided beams of polar molecules
High fluxes of cold polar molecules are efficiently produced by electric
guiding and velocity filtering. Here, we investigate different aspects of the
beam formation. Variations of the source parameters such as density and
temperature result in characteristic changes in the guided beam. These are
observed in the velocity distribution of the guided molecules as well as in the
dependence of the signal of guided molecules on the trapping electric field. A
model taking into account velocity-dependent collisional losses of cold
molecules in the region close to the nozzle accurately reproduces this
behavior. This clarifies an open question on the parameter dependence of the
detected signal and gives a more detailed understanding of the velocity
filtering and guiding process
Internal-state thermometry by depletion spectroscopy in a cold guided beam of formaldehyde
We present measurements of the internal state distribution of
electrostatically guided formaldehyde. Upon excitation with continuous tunable
ultraviolet laser light the molecules dissociate, leading to a decrease in the
molecular flux. The population of individual guided states is measured by
addressing transitions originating from them. The measured populations of
selected states show good agreement with theoretical calculations for different
temperatures of the molecule source. The purity of the guided beam as deduced
from the entropy of the guided sample using a source temperature of 150K
corresponds to that of a thermal ensemble with a temperature of about 30 K
Water vapor at a translational temperature of one kelvin
We report the creation of a confined slow beam of heavy-water (D2O) molecules
with a translational temperature around 1 kelvin. This is achieved by filtering
slow D2O from a thermal ensemble with inhomogeneous static electric fields
exploiting the quadratic Stark shift of D2O. All previous demonstrations of
electric field manipulation of cold dipolar molecules rely on a predominantly
linear Stark shift. Further, on the basis of elementary molecular properties
and our filtering technique we argue that our D2O beam contains molecules in
only a few ro-vibrational states.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, 1 tabl
Feedback Cooling of a Single Neutral Atom
We demonstrate feedback cooling of the motion of a single rubidium atom
trapped in a high-finesse optical resonator to a temperature of about 160 \mu
K. Time-dependent transmission and intensity-correlation measurements prove the
reduction of the atomic position uncertainty. The feedback increases the 1/e
storage time into the one second regime, 30 times longer than without feedback.
Feedback cooling therefore rivals state-of-the-art laser cooling, but with the
advantages that it requires less optical access and exhibits less optical
pumping.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure
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
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