Gallery
January 2024
YbII: The full chamber and the full team!
January 2024
YbII: Science/3D MOT coils assembled around the vacuum chamber, with the breadboards in place.
May 2023
YbII: Bucket windows inside the Science Chamber. Two of three macor plates are visible; the top plate which will hold the cavity will be inserted after a long bake.
May 2023
YbII: The full chamber comes together!Â
April 2023
YbII: Science/3D MOT coils. Big dreams, big coils.
February 2023
The Covey Lab is finally almost ready for move in! 2.5 years later...
January 2023
YbII: Yb-171 2D MOT!Â
December 2022
YbII: Yb-171 fluorescence from the oven in the YbII chamber! The next step is to create a 2D MOT.
November 2022
YbI: Small array of 171Yb atoms. (We still need to uniformize and focus a bit better.) We will go much bigger soon!
November (from June) 2022
YbII: Chamber design from the summer. The right hand side is the 2D MOT region, shown below. Work on the left hand side (the Science/3D MOT region) is underway.
November 2022
YbII: Permanent magnet assembly for the 2D MOT, being tested with a Gauss meter. This assembly fits around the vacuum chamber shown below.
November 2022
YbII: 2D MOT and pumping region of the new YbII system. There is a gate valve to separate the Science/3D MOT region from the 2D MOT/source region. We decided to use an Yb oven this time instead of dispensers.
November 2022
YbI: Improved single-atom histogram of 171Yb in a 760-nm tweezer. Combined single-atom detection fidelity and readout survival is 0.96. This is limited by off-resonant scatter to a dark state, which we are working on.
October 2022
YbI: Single-atom histogram of 171Yb in a 760-nm tweezer of depth ~400 uK. It took us a while to clean everything up with parity projection and cooling. The atomic survival is limited by off-resonant scattering to 3S1 via 3P1, which can then decay to dark states 3P0 and 3P2. We plan to repump these.
May 2022
YbI: Preliminary averaged image of a small 171Yb tweezer array at 772 nm. The size of the array is limited by available laser power with our M2 laser still wounded.
May 2022
YbI: Simultaneous view of our green compressed MOT and a tweezer array with 12 um spacing.Â
April 2022
YbI: Zeeman map of the 3P1 F=3/2 levels, showing that the |mF|=1/2 states have a differential polarizability compared to 1S0 below roughly 1% at 772 nm. The top two lines at zero field are +-1/2 while the bottom two are +-3/2 (-3/2 is faint), with larger differential polarizability.
January 2022
YbI: Hourglass-shaped profile of the fluorescence of a 556 nm tweezer in the blue MOT, showing good alignment of the MOT onto the tweezers. It can clearly even be seen by eye.
January 2022
YbI: Hourglass-shaped profile of the fluorescence of a 556 nm tweezer in the blue MOT, showing good alignment of the MOT onto the tweezers.
November 2021
YbI: A preliminary 1D array of 532-nm tweezers generated with an AOD. A bit more alignment is needed, but we are getting close to single atoms!
July 2021
YbI: Green fluorescence from a 3D MOT in the science cell.
July 2021
YbI: Blue 2D MOT source on the left pushing cold atoms to the science cell where blue and then green 3D MOTs will catch them before loading tweezers.
June 2021
YbI: Blue 3D MOT of nearly 100 million atoms in the science cell.Â
May 2021
Laser progress including the intercombination line and clock transition systems!
May 2021
YbI: Microscope objectives are now in place near the science cell.
April 2021
YbI: Yb atoms! Fluorescence from the beams with laser-cooled atoms at the center!
April 2021
YbI: MOT beams assembled around the 2D MOT chamber and coils. Time to look for atoms!
April 2021
YbI: Vacuum chamber and coils now in place and ready to use!
April 2021
YbI: Vacuum chamber and coils now in place and ready to use!
April 2021
YbI: Vacuum chamber and coils now in place and ready to use!
March 2021
YbI: View of 3D MOT/science coils from the upper breadboard.
March 2021
YbI: View of 3D MOT/science coils from the lower breadboard.
March 2021
YbI: View from the end of the 3D MOT/science cell. The electrode routing and differential pumping tube before the 2D MOT cell can be seen.
March 2021
YbI: Fully assembled chamber! Both cells are in a protective "garage".
March 2021
YbI: Finalized 2D MOT cell with Yb dispensers inside.
March 2021
YbI: Wiring up the 2D MOT coils.
March 2021
YbI: Preparing for the 2D MOT once the chamber is assembled.
March 2021
YbI: 3D MOT coils/science coils.
Feb. 2021
YbI: Yb dispenser cartridge; another view. This assembly houses four dispensers. Vacuum chamber assembly is imminent!
Feb. 2021
YbI: Yb dispenser cartridge with "dummy" dispensers made of copper. The tall steel sections are baffles with slits for targeted emission of atoms into the 2D MOT loading volume. All the (custom) machining is finally finished!
Jan. 2021
Cavity spacer in the vacuum can for narrow laser stabilization. (Image rotation will be figured out eventually!)
Jan. 2021
399 nm laser system for 2D and 3D MOT.
Dec. 2020
YbI: Breadboard assembly, showing where the B-field coils and the vacuum chamber will be situated. More breadboards and optics coming soon!
Dec. 2020
YbI: 2D MOT cell.
Dec. 2020
YbI: 3D MOT / science cell.
Nov. 2020
YbI: Some progress in the lab. Laser installs and preparing for vacuum chamber assembly.
Nov. 2020
YbI: The oven for the air bake of the steel vacuum components.