Mudarikwa, Lawrence (2015). Cold atoms in a ring cavity. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.
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Mudarikwa15PhD.pdf
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Abstract
An ensemble of atoms coupled to a high finesse optical cavity is an ideal test bed for the study of the cooperative behaviour of atom-photon systems. Dicke showed that an ensemble of excited atoms coupled to a light field interacts with the light in a collective and coherent fashion leading to the emission of highly directional spontaneous emission whose intensity scales with the square of the number of atoms, a phenomenon known as superradiance.
This thesis describes the build of an experiment to study cooperative atom-photon interactions in a ring cavity. Particular focus is given to the cavities used in the experiment. Firstly a transfer cavity used for transferring stability to off-resonant lasers in the experiment, this was developed with the capability of exploiting Gouy phase degeneracies to produce tightly spaced frequency discriminants to be used as lock points. Secondly the ring cavity for the experiment which is atypical in its design allowing for bidirectional probing of the cavity mode and dynamic manipulation of the intra-cavity optical lattice. An intra-cavity MOT was produced and collective strong coupling was observed in the cavity with an Neff=6400 atoms coupled to the cavity mode.
| Type of Work: | Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.) | ||||||
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| Award Type: | Doctorates > Ph.D. | ||||||
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| College/Faculty: | Colleges (2008 onwards) > College of Engineering & Physical Sciences | ||||||
| School or Department: | School of Physics and Astronomy | ||||||
| Funders: | None/not applicable | ||||||
| Subjects: | Q Science > QC Physics | ||||||
| URI: | http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/id/eprint/5843 |
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