Optical imaging of Rydberg atoms
Name
837286839-MIT.pdf
Description
Full printable version
Size
9.04 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
bbf2e9d2368e600f9919823e90c190b1
Author(s)
Mazurenko, Anton
Advisor(s)
Vladan Vuletić.
Date Issued
2012
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
We present an experiment exploring electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) in Rydberg atoms in order to observe optical nonlinearities at the single photon level. ⁸⁷Rb atoms are trapped and cooled using a magneto-optical trap (MOT) and a far off resonance dipole trap (FORT). Once the system is prepared, a ladder EIT scheme with Rydberg atoms is used to map the photon field onto the ensemble. The powerful dipole interaction between Rydberg atoms allows the system to exhibit many-body quantum mechanical effects. We also describe an imaging method to observe the Rydberg blockade. Last of all, we present a preliminary measurement of EIT in a Rydberg system. In this measurement, the transmission shows sensitivity to the applied photon flux, and exhibits temporal correlations in the photons exiting the EIT medium.
Description
Thesis (S.B.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Physics, 2012.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 109-111).
Subjects
Physics.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
Terms of Use
M.I.T. theses are protected by
copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but
reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written
permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.
copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but
reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written
permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.
Persistent DSpace Link
