Gallery

He*: The RF resonator for creating the glow discharge plasma

He*: The test chamber for generating a metastable helium flux from a gas source!

He*: The glow discharge plasma!

Cs: Uniform array of 8500 tweezers on the dynamic array system for Cs

YbII: The cavity is finally in the chamber!

YbII: The cavity is finally in the chamber!

YbII: The cavity is finally in the chamber!

YbII: The cavity is finally in the chamber!

YbII: Blue and green MOTs in the new chamber!

YbII: The full chamber and the full team!

YbII: Science/3D MOT coils assembled around the vacuum chamber, with the breadboards in place.

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.

YbII: The full chamber comes together! 

YbII: Science/3D MOT coils. Big dreams, big coils.

The Covey Lab is finally almost ready for move in! 2.5 years later...

YbII: Yb-171 2D MOT! 

YbII: Yb-171 fluorescence from the oven in the YbII chamber! The next step is to create a 2D MOT.

YbI: Small array of 171Yb atoms. (We still need to uniformize and focus a bit better.) We will go much bigger soon!

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.

YbII: Permanent magnet assembly for the 2D MOT, being tested with a Gauss meter. This assembly fits around the vacuum chamber shown below.

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.

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.

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.

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.

YbI: Simultaneous view of our green compressed MOT and a tweezer array with 12 um spacing. 

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.

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.

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.

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!

YbI: Green fluorescence from a 3D MOT in the science cell.

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.

YbI: Blue 3D MOT of nearly 100 million atoms in the science cell. 

Laser progress including the intercombination line and clock transition systems!

YbI: Microscope objectives are now in place near the science cell.

YbI: Yb atoms! Fluorescence from the beams with laser-cooled atoms at the center!

YbI: MOT beams assembled around the 2D MOT chamber and coils. Time to look for atoms!

YbI: Vacuum chamber and coils now in place and ready to use!

YbI: Vacuum chamber and coils now in place and ready to use!

YbI: Vacuum chamber and coils now in place and ready to use!

YbI: View of 3D MOT/science coils from the upper breadboard.

YbI: View of 3D MOT/science coils from the lower breadboard.

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.

YbI: Fully assembled chamber! Both cells are in a protective "garage".

YbI: Finalized 2D MOT cell with Yb dispensers inside.

YbI: Wiring up the 2D MOT coils.

YbI: Preparing for the 2D MOT once the chamber is assembled.

YbI: 3D MOT coils/science coils.

YbI: Yb dispenser cartridge; another view. This assembly houses four dispensers. Vacuum chamber assembly is imminent!

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!

Cavity spacer in the vacuum can for narrow laser stabilization. (Image rotation will be figured out eventually!)

399 nm laser system for 2D and 3D MOT.

YbI: Breadboard assembly, showing where the B-field coils and the vacuum chamber will be situated. More breadboards and optics coming soon!

YbI: 2D MOT cell.

YbI: 3D MOT / science cell.

YbI: Some progress in the lab. Laser installs and preparing for vacuum chamber assembly.

YbI: The oven for the air bake of the steel vacuum components.