Our New Home: SW3 B730

Through the help of John Wong (Campus Planning, BCIT), Tim Wong (Project Coordinator, BCIT) we are currently relocating to a more suitable basement location on the Burnaby campus. This new room is much quieter and darker than the previous location -- two qualities near and dear to the hearts of people who work with laser systems. I will be sharing this space with Dr. Bob Bower (Chemistry, BCIT) whose area expertise is the interaction of tissue with laser light.

The reconstruction of vacuum and laser systems is currently ongoing.

Cool Results

This link shows a video of the rubidium atoms in the magneto-optical trap: Rb in MOT.

This link shows an animated .gif of the rubidium atoms being pushed out of the trap by an (invisible) laser beam. The laser is introduced from the right hand side and provides an unbalanced force pushing the atoms to the left. The frames of the .gif are 1/30s apart, showing how quickly the atoms move. The afterglow from the original position of the trap is an artifact of the video phosphors' decay.

Finally, the behaviour of the MOT is sometimes surprising. Just before the system was dismantled for the move, I observed an odd annular trap configuation. I do not understand how such a shape trap is formed. (The ring measures 3.7 mm in diameter and 1 mm thick. It is tilted at an angle of 18.5° to the horizontal and is sensitive to the alignment of the trapping lasers and the strength of the magnetic induction field gradient applied.)

New Photos from our new home:

Measuring the size of our MOT with a Pixelink PL-A741 Camera: Click here.

Testing Linearity of the camera settings on the atom cloud: Linearity

Watch the rubdium atomic cloud expand through an optical molasses in this animated .gif. The atoms drop and then bounce around a little as they encounter variations in the lasers' intensities near the edge of the molasses.