Jonathan Weinstein
University of Nevada at Reno
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
2:00 pm in SPL 38
Atom-molecule coherence and other ultracold oddities
Abstract: I will describe an experiment from the NIST Laser Cooling Group in which we use photoassociation to produce ultracold sodium dimers from a gas of atomic sodium. We use continuous-wave lasers to state- selectively form and detect excited-state molecules. By introducing additional lasers, we can couple the excited molecular state to the ground state. We have used this system for high-resolution molecular spectroscopy, to create ultracold molecules, and to create dark atom- molecule superposition states.