Goetz, Simone | Engineering Papers

DOE OSTI2013

Photoionization of optically trapped ultracold atoms with a high-power light-emitting diode

Photoionization of laser-cooled atoms using short pulses of a high-power light-emitting diode (LED) is demonstrated. Light pulses as short as 30 ns have been realized with the simple LED driver circuit. We measure the ionization cross section of {sup 85}Rb atoms in the first excited state, and show how this technique can be used for calibrating efficiencies of ion detector assemblies.

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2012

Versatile cold atom target apparatus

We report on a compact and transportable apparatus that consists of a cold atomic target at the center of a high resolution recoil ion momentum spectrometer. Cold rubidium atoms serve as a target which can be operated in three different modes: in continuous mode, consisting of a cold atom beam generated by a two-dimensional magneto-optical trap, in normal mode in which the atoms from the beam are trapped in a three-dimensional magneto-optical trap (3D MOT), and in high density mode in which the 3D MOT is operated in dark spontaneous optical trap configuration. The targets are characterized using photoionization.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗