PhD PROJECTS

Atom waveguiding, slow atomcollision processes and atom optics development:
 

The Atom Manipulation Project (AMP) is offering a range of topic areas for PhD studies next year that cover our present research interests (see AMP home page):

• atomic wave guiding in hollow optical fibres
• atomic collision processes with trapped metastable helium atoms
• creation of atom optical elements for atom interferometry and other applications

We will discuss with you how your particular interests will fit into these research programs, and can tailor a PhD project to suit your experience and interests accordingly.

Presently there are three experimental facilities which we use for these programs:

• Tthe bright metastable helium atomic beam line - for slow (10-100 m/s) atom experiments such as the hollow fibre waveguiding
• Tthe cryogenic metastable helium trap - for atomic collision studies and large de Broglie wavelength atom optics experiments
• The General Experimental Rig for Applications and Laboratory Development (GERALD) - e.g. atom lithography

We also have a magneto-optic trap (MOT) for metastable helium atoms, where ~108 -109 atoms are stored and cooled to temperatures of ~1mK as described on the trap page. This trap was previously loaded from the bright beam line, but we are now developing a liquid helium cooled (4K) source of metastable helium atoms to load the trap directly.

The GERALD rig is a duplicate of the liquid nitrogen cooled source used for the beam line, but with a flexible system of experimental chambers that can be used for manipulating metastable rare gas beams, and applying it to other atom optics experiments - primarily atom lithography.
 

Doing a PhD project in the globally extremely competitive field of atom optics can give you a unique range of fields of expertise, such as:

• Light-matter interactions
• Ultra stable lasers and high resolution laser spectroscopy
• Ultra high vacuum technology
• Computational physics to simulate your experiment.
• Data analysis
• Applications of diode lasers

During the initial stages of the project, the student will work together with more experienced people to obtain experience in running the experimental facilities. Once a student gets into the experimental part of their own project, he/she is expected to be more self-sufficient. At this time, more junior honours/phd students could be working with him. At all times, the academic staff involved in the project will be present in the laboratory or available for assistance.

If you are interested in doing a PhD in the Atom Manipulation Project, for more information contact:

Dr. Ken Baldwin