Bloch Oscillations of cold atoms inside an optical cavity

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• Duncan O'Dell (McMaster University)
• Friday 18 March 2011, 14:00-15:00
• Physics East 217.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Vincent Boyer.

I will discuss our theoretical work on ultracold atoms trapped inside optical cavities pumped by lasers. The strong atom-light coupling inside a cavity means that atoms can significantly perturb the intra-cavity optical lattice (unlike the situation for cold atoms in standard “free space” optical lattices). This feedback nonlinearity can be used to detect single atoms and has also recently been shown by the Berkeley and ETH groups to lead to bistability in the number of photons in the cavity. In this talk we consider another application of the feedback nonlinearity, namely for the continuous (non-destructive) measurement of Bloch oscillations of atoms for sensitive force measurement. However, we find that bistability leads to swallowtail loops in the atomic dispersion relation which has important implications for Bloch oscillations in these systems.

This talk is part of the Cold Atoms series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• Bham Talks
• Cold Atoms
• Physics East 217
• What's on in Physics?

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