Gordon Research Conferences - 2009 (Atomic Physics)

The gordon research conferences take place on a number of frontiers in research areas every years and the conference in the same area is organized every two years. They were started by Professor Neil E. Gordon in 1930s. Therefore, these confernces carry a long hostory with them. The GRC-2009 in Atomic Physics was organised from June 28-July 03 at Tilton Shcool, Tilton, New Hampshire.

More than 150 participants incuding twenty plus speakers were present in the conference. The speakers were the top researchers in the field from around the world. About a 100 posters were presented on current researches in two sessions. Most of the talks and posters were from the experimentalists on the subject but there were some atomic physics theorists too to give talks and present posters. The talks were on variety of disciplines of Atomic physics - Bose and Fermi gases, atomic reactions in ultra cold environments, formation of qubits using atomic ions, etc. A day started with breakfast at 7:30 A.M. and ended with a social from 10:00 P.M. - 12:00(midnight) or so. I was so surprised to see that the frontier research scientists work all the time no matter whether they are in a meeting hall or in a dining table or in a social or wherever they are !

There were a lot of indoor and outdoor extra activities too in the free time like hiking, rafting and kayaking. Unfortunately, because of the weather, we could not do outdoor activities. Most of the week was spent on campus, attending the conferences, presenting poster, chatting, working on computers and eating and drinking.

I can not stop myself writing on the quality and quantity of foods in the conference. It was the place where you could eat anything of your choice and any amount you would want. It was really great. The conference staffs in the kitchen and everywhere were so friendly and helpful. We spent a very good time in overall in the GRC-2009 in Atomic Physics at Tilton School !

Second Annual Greater Boston Area Quantum Matter Meeting

The Second Annual Greater Boston Area Quantum Matter Meeting took place in Metcalf Science Center, Physics Department, Boston University, on Saturday, May 9, 2009. The topics of presentation were mainly on quantum systems: strongly correlated systems, atomic and optical systems, and mesoscopics. There were four invited talks, each of about 30 minutes duration and more than thirty contributed talks, each of 4-5 minutes. The schedule is available here. This program was a continuation of the First Annual Greater Boston Area Quantum Matter Meeting, which took place in Jefferson Building, Physics department, on Saturday, May 10, 2008. The link of this meeting can be found in here.

How is the information extracted from cold atom interferometers?

The cold atoms (thermal atoms) or a BEC sitting at the bottom of a magnetic trap is split by a laser standing wave and the wave packets are allowed to evolve in time. At the end of the interferometric cycle, the wave-packets are recombined by a recombining pulse (identical to the splitting pulse). The trap is switched off and the wave packets are allowed to expand. Then the imaging of the wave packets is done by using laser light. One of the techniques is the absorption imaging technique. In this method, a resonant light is shone on the wave packets and the images obtained from this are fitted with some suitable known models. The useful information is then extracted by interpreting the fitting parameters.

Note: This post is in progress !

BEC in a triple well potential

This is a review of a paper by Rab et. al.

Consider a triple well potential with the wells 'L' , 'M' and 'R' for the left, middle and right wells respectively. A BEC sitting in the 'L' well can be transported to the 'R' well so that no atoms are left in the 'M' well. The researchers call this process as macroscopic matter-wave Transport Without Transit (TWT) and this can be done by Stimulated Raman Adiabatic Passage(STIRAP). In STIRAP, is a technique to transfer population between two atomic states - 1 and 3 via an intermediate excited state 2. The atomic population is adiabatically transferred from the state 1 to state 3 by coupling the states 1 to 2 and and 2 to 3 using electromagnetic pulses. The population transfer is achieved via a superposition of the states 1 and 3 with the occupation of the state 2 strongly suppressed. That's why is is called the TWT.

Note: This post is in progress.

Collapse of a wave function !

What happens when light passes though a single slit? What happens when light passes through a double slit? What happens when a beam of electrons passes through a single slit? a double slit? What happens when the electron beam hitting a double slit is observed? The following YOUTUBE video by Dr. Quantum answers most of these questions.

What is a BOSE Einstein Condensate ?

A Bose Einstein Condensate (BEC) is a special phase of matter when a dilute bosonic gas is cooled to a temperature below the critical temperature (Tc). The critical temperature is in the range of some micro Kelvins to nano Kelvins. The Bose Einstein Condensation was predicted by Albert Einstein in 1924 by applying the Bose Statistics to massive particles - atoms. Satyendra Nath Bose , an Indian physicist, developed a statistics for the photons (light particles), which are massless.

Because of the lack of cooling technology, the world had to wait for the next 70 years to realize a BEC in a laboratory. In 1995, a BEC was realized in JILA by cooling down a dilute atomic gas of Rubidium-87 to a temperature of about 170 nano Kelvins. In the same year, BECs were observed in MIT by cooling down a dilute atomic gas of Sodium-23 and in Rice University by cooling down a dilute atomic gas of Lithium-7. Three physicists- Carl Wieman, Eric Cornell and Wolfgang Ketterle were awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics for this great achievement.

A BEC is made by cooling a dilute gas in the following sequence. A dilute atomic gas obtained from oven is cooled down by Helium to its temperature which is about 4 Kelvin. Then it is loaded in a trap called a Magneto-Optical-Trap (MOT), where the atoms are trapped and cooled by six polarized lasers directed orthogonally towards the center of the trap. Lasers cool the atoms to a lower temperature but not to the critical temperature. Beyond that the trapped gas is cooled by evaporative cooling, where the cooling is done by varying the frequency of the radio-frequency waves.

A nice analogy to evaporative cooling is the cooling of the coffee in a coffee mug. The most energetic coffee molecules close to the surface of the coffee in a coffee mug escape from the surface taking some energy and so the rest of the coffee in the mug will have less energy. As a result of which the coffee in the mug cools down. Similar is the case of evaporative cooling where the most energetic gas atoms from the trap escape taking the energy away, cooling down the remaining atoms. Finally, when the critical temperature is reached, all the atoms in the trap come to occupy the ground state, forming a blob of matter. This is neither solid, liquid, nor a gas. It is a condensate and is called a Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC).

A BEC is a very nice mesoscopic quantum system and so is a nice candidate to test the laws of quantum mechanics and perform atom interferometric experiments.

Daniel Kleppner, an MIT professor, gives a really illuminating picture of the Bose-Einstein condensate in the following YOUTUBE video.

Ramsey-Borde Atom Interferometer

A Ramsey-Borde interferometer is a matter wave interferometer which uses a beam of cold atoms/molecules as a matter wave and four traveling waves as beam-splitters. The matter wave is split at first by a laser traveling wave into two wave packets of which 50% of the atoms/molecules remain in the ground state and the other 50% go to the excited state by absorbing a photon from the laser. After a certain time interval, the second laser wave is used to split the two wave packets again. Then two subsequent splittings are made by two waves traveling in an opposite directions to the direction of the previous waves.

Note: This posting is in progress.