CONSTRUCTION OF APPARATUS AND FIRST EXPERIMENTS INVESTIGATING DYNAMICS OF BOSE-EINSTEIN CONDENSATES IN DISORDERED OPTICAL LATTICES

dc.contributor.advisorRolston, Steven Len_US
dc.contributor.authorEdwards, Emily E.en_US
dc.contributor.departmentPhysicsen_US
dc.contributor.publisherDigital Repository at the University of Marylanden_US
dc.contributor.publisherUniversity of Maryland (College Park, Md.)en_US
dc.date.accessioned2009-07-02T05:42:59Z
dc.date.available2009-07-02T05:42:59Z
dc.date.issued2009en_US
dc.description.abstractSince the experimental achievement of Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) in dilute gases, ultra-cold atom systems have proven to be an unparalleled test bed for condensed matter phenomena. With this in mind, our laboratory set out to build an apparatus for the study of the effects of disorder on condensed matter phase transitions using a BEC loaded into one, two, and three-dimensional lattices. My thesis is divided into two main sections. In the first section I describe in detail the design and construction of our apparatus. Our system is designed to form <super>87<\super>Rb condensates of approximately 10<super>5<\super> atoms. We have three possible experimental science chambers. 1. One can perform 1D lattice experiments in the chamber where the condensate is formed. There is a mirror located in vacuum, which is suitable for this purpose. 2. In a glass chamber one can do 1D, 2D, or 3D lattice experiments. Atoms are loaded into a dipole trap (optical tweezer) prior to condensation and transported approximately 20 cm to the glass cell where optical evaporation is performed to form a BEC. 3. One can transfer, using the same techniques as (2), to a chamber with a multi-channel plate detector for Rydberg atom experiments. The experimental results described in my thesis pertain to situation (1). However, I describe some details of (2) in the construction section. The first experiment presented in my thesis demonstrates the effect of disorder on the time-dependent dynamics of lattice systems. We observe that a small perturbation produces a dramatic change in the adiabaticity criteria for loading a BEC into one-dimensional optical lattice. I conclude with experiments that we expect to perform on this apparatus.en_US
dc.format.extent20556431 bytes
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdf
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/9156
dc.language.isoen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledPhysics, Atomicen_US
dc.titleCONSTRUCTION OF APPARATUS AND FIRST EXPERIMENTS INVESTIGATING DYNAMICS OF BOSE-EINSTEIN CONDENSATES IN DISORDERED OPTICAL LATTICESen_US
dc.typeDissertationen_US

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