Ajay Wasan

Loading of a Rb magneto-optic trap from a getter source

We study the properties of a Rb magneto-optic trap loaded from a commercial getter source. The source provides a large flux of atoms for the trap along with the capability of rapid turn off necessary for obtaining long trap lifetimes. We have studied the trap loading at two different values of background pressure to determine the cross section for Rb-N2 collisions to be 3.5(4)310214 cm2 and that for Rb-Rb collisions to be of order 3310213 cm2. At a background pressure of 1.331029 torr, we load more than 108 atoms into the trap with a time constant of 3.3 s. The 1/e lifetime of trapped atoms is 13 s limited only by background collisions.

High-resolution hyperfine spectroscopy of excited states using electromagnetically induced transparency

We use the phenomenon of electromagnetically induced transparency in a three-level atomic system for hyperfine spectroscopy of upper states that are not directly coupled to the ground state. The three levels form a ladder system: the probe laser couples the ground state to the lower excited state, while the control laser couples the two upper states. As the frequency of the control laser is scanned, the probe absorption shows transparency peaks whenever the control laser is resonant with a hyperfine level of the upper state. As an illustration of the technique, we measure hyperfine structure in the

High-accuracy wavemeter based on a stabilized diode laser

7S_{1/2}

New manifestation of atomic parity violation in cesium: a chiral optical gain induced by linearly polarized 6S-7S excitation.

states of

Electromagnetic induced transparency in the Doppler broadened cascade transition with multiple excited levels

^{85}Rb

Coherent control of magneto-optic rotation

and

Subnatural linewidth in room-temperature Rb vapor using a control laser

^{87}Rb

Prospects for forbidden-transition spectroscopy and parity violation measurements using a beam of cold stable or radioactive atoms

, and obtain an improvement of more than an order of magnitude over previous values.

Wavelength mismatch effect in electromagnetically induced absorption

We have built a high-accuracy wavelength meter for tunable lasers using a scanning Michelson interferometer and a reference laser of known wavelength. The reference laser is a frequency-stabilized diode laser locked to an atomic transition in Rb. The wavemeter has a statistical error per measurement of 5 parts in

Resolving closely spaced hyperfine levels in the 3P3/2 state of 23Na

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