Single-shot Stern-Gerlach magnetic gradiometer with an expanding cloud of cold cesium atoms

Quantum Chaos with Cold Cesium Atoms

Subrecoil Raman spectroscopy of cold cesium atoms

We describe and characterize a setup for subrecoil stimulated Raman spectroscopy of cold cesium atoms. We study in particular the performances of a method designed to active control and stabilization of the magnetic fields across a cold-atom cloud inside a small vacuum cell. The performance of the setup is monitored by copropagative-beam stimulated Raman spectroscopy of a cold cesium sample. Th...

Static Stern-Gerlach effect in magnetic force microscopy

The Stern-Gerlach ~SG! effect, one of the cornerstones of a quantum mechanics, still attracts much attention. ~See, for example, Refs. @1–7#.! The SG apparatus clearly demonstrates the quantization of angular momentum and it can also demonstrate the mysterious puzzles of quantum measurement, macroscopic quantum superposition ~Schrödinger-cat! states, and decoherence. The SG effect was used to m...

Population-grating transfer in cold cesium atoms

Optical-pumping-induced population-grating transfer between hyperfine levels of the cesium D2 line is observed through four-wave mixing in a sample of cold atoms. Diffraction efficiencies of order of 1% have been measured for a large range of angular apertures. We have studied the angular dependence of the diffracted signal in the limit of small atomic velocities and discussed its application f...

Generalized Stern-Gerlach effect for chiral molecules.

The Stern-Gerlach effect is well known as spin-dependent splitting of a beam of atoms with magnetic moments by a magnetic-field gradient. Here, we show that an induced gauge potential may lead to a similar effect for chiral molecules. In the presence of three inhomogeneous light fields, the center of mass of a three-level chiral molecule is subject to an optically induced gauge potential, and t...