Building and detecting an optical lattice

by Bish, Samuel Gerard.

BUILDING AND DETECTING AN OPTICAL LATTICE by Samuel Gerard Bish The purpose of this thesis is to trap 85Rb atoms in an optical lattice (a series of light– shifted optical potentials), and then verify the existence of a lattice through the use of Bragg scattering. An optical lattice requires the use of a magneto–optical trap to first collect the rubidium atoms and cool them to the Doppler limit (143 µK for 85Rb), the optical lattice is capable of cooling atoms far below the Doppler cooling limit (?10 µK). For this project we decided to start from scratch with an all new vacuum chamber, which required the construction of new magnetic coils (to cancel the Earth’s magnetic field and to apply a magnetic gradient to the chamber necessary for the magneto–optical trap), as well as the use of a new method of leaking rubidium into the chamber. When we started it was necessary to overhaul the entire vacuum system and the lasers necessary to trap the atom. This thesis describes the progress achieved toward building the optical lattice.