Search results for " atomic physics"
showing 10 items of 344 documents
Space-borne Bose–Einstein condensation for precision interferometry
2018
Space offers virtually unlimited free-fall in gravity. Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) enables ineffable low kinetic energies corresponding to pico- or even femtokelvins. The combination of both features makes atom interferometers with unprecedented sensitivity for inertial forces possible and opens a new era for quantum gas experiments. On January 23, 2017, we created Bose-Einstein condensates in space on the sounding rocket mission MAIUS-1 and conducted 110 experiments central to matter-wave interferometry. In particular, we have explored laser cooling and trapping in the presence of large accelerations as experienced during launch, and have studied the evolution, manipulation and interf…
Measurement of untruncated nuclear spin interactions via zero- to ultralow-field nuclear magnetic resonance
2015
Zero- to ultra-low-field nuclear magnetic resonance (ZULF NMR) provides a new regime for the measurement of nuclear spin-spin interactions free from effects of large magnetic fields, such as truncation of terms that do not commute with the Zeeman Hamiltonian. One such interaction, the magnetic dipole-dipole coupling, is a valuable source of spatial information in NMR, though many terms are unobservable in high-field NMR, and the coupling averages to zero under isotropic molecular tumbling. Under partial alignment, this information is retained in the form of so-called residual dipolar couplings. We report zero- to ultra-low-field NMR measurements of residual dipolar couplings in acetonitrile…
Compact two-electron wave function for bond dissociation and Van der Waals interactions: A natural amplitude assessment
2014
Electron correlations in molecules can be divided in short range dynamical correlations, long range Van der Waals type interactions and near degeneracy static correlations. In this work we analyze for a one-dimensional model of a two-electron system how these three types of correlations can be incorporated in a simple wave function of restricted functional form consisting of an orbital product multiplied by a single correlation function $f(r_{12})$ depending on the interelectronic distance $r_{12}$. Since the three types of correlations mentioned lead to different signatures in terms of the natural orbital (NO) amplitudes in two-electron systems we make an analysis of the wave function in t…
Long-range interactions and the sign of natural amplitudes in two-electron systems
2013
In singlet two-electron systems the natural occupation numbers of the one-particle reduced density matrix are given as squares of the natural amplitudes which are defined as the expansion coefficients of the two-electron wave function in a natural orbital basis. In this work we relate the sign of the natural amplitudes to the nature of the two-body interaction. We show that long-range Coulomb-type interactions are responsible for the appearance of positive amplitudes and give both analytical and numerical examples that illustrate how the long-distance structure of the wave function affects these amplitudes. We further demonstrate that the amplitudes show an avoided crossing behavior as func…
Optical Shielding of Destructive Chemical Reactions between Ultracold Ground-State NaRb Molecules
2020
Polar quantum gases represent promising platforms for studying many-body physics and strongly correlated systems with possible applications e.g. in quantum simulation or quantum computation. Due to their large permanent electric dipole moment polar molecules in electric field exhibit strong long-range anisotropic dipole-dipole interactions (DDIs). The creation and trapping of ultracold dipolar diatomic molecules of various species are feasible in many experimental groups nowadays. However long time trapping is still a challenge even in the case of the so called nonreactive molecules which are supposed to be immune against inelastic collisions in their absolute ground state [1] . Various hyp…
Isotope-shift measurements of stable and short-lived lithium isotopes for nuclear-charge-radii determination
2010
Changes in the mean-square nuclear charge radii along the lithium isotopic chain were determined using a combination of precise isotope shift measurements and theoretical atomic structure calculations. Nuclear charge radii of light elements are of high interest due to the appearance of the nuclear halo phenomenon in this region of the nuclear chart. During the past years we have developed a new laser spectroscopic approach to determine the charge radii of lithium isotopes which combines high sensitivity, speed, and accuracy to measure the extremely small field shift of an 8 ms lifetime isotope with production rates on the order of only 10,000 atoms/s. The method was applied to all bound iso…
Sympathetic cooling schemes for separately trapped ions coupled via image currents
2021
Cooling of particles to mK-temperatures is essential for a variety of experiments with trapped charged particles. However, many species of interest lack suitable electronic transitions for direct laser cooling. We study theoretically the remote sympathetic cooling of a single proton with laser-cooled $^9$Be$^+$ in a double-Penning-trap system. We investigate three different cooling schemes and find, based on analytical calculations and numerical simulations, that two of them are capable of achieving proton temperatures of about 10 mK with cooling times on the order of 10 s. In contrast, established methods such as feedback-enhanced resistive cooling with image-current detectors are limited …
Ab initio angle- and energy-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy with time-dependent density-functional theory
2012
We present a time-dependent density-functional method able to describe the photoelectron spectrum of atoms and molecules when excited by laser pulses. This computationally feasible scheme is based on a geometrical partitioning that efficiently gives access to photoelectron spectroscopy in time-dependent density-functional calculations. By using a geometrical approach, we provide a simple description of momentum-resolved photoemission including multiphoton effects. The approach is validated by comparison with results in the literature and exact calculations. Furthermore, we present numerical photoelectron angular distributions for randomly oriented nitrogen molecules in a short near-infrared…
Ultra-fast detection of the center frequency of a spectral line from amplitude-weighted average
2023
Spectroscopy methods often require calculating the central frequency of a resonance line, that is usually implemented by finding a best fit to the spectrum by a line-shape function. Such an iterative procedure is slow and requires an initial guess. We report an analytical method for calculating the central frequency of a spectral line by using the mean value of its frequencies, which are weighted by corresponding normalized intensities. We use this method to calculate two-dimensional arrays of central frequencies from parallely measured magnetic resonance spectra, which are optically detected by a camera sensor in a thin layer of NV centers with superparamagnetic hemozoin crystals on top of…
Identification of autoionizing states of atomic chromium for resonance photo-ionization at the ISOLDE-RILIS
2015
The resonance ionization laser ion source (RILIS) is the principal ion source of the ISOLDE radioactive beam facility based at CERN. Using the method of in-source resonance ionization spectroscopy, an optimal three-step, three-resonance photo-ionization scheme has been developed for chromium. The scheme uses an ionizing transition to one of the 14 newly observed autoionizing states. This work increases the range of ISOLDE-RILIS ionized beams to 32 chemical elements. Details of the spectroscopic studies are described and the new ionization scheme is summarized. A link to the complete version of this document will be added here following publication: