We report long-term laser frequency stabilization using only the target laser and a pair of 5 m fiber interferometers, one as a frequency reference and the second as a sensitive thermometer to stabilize the frequency reference. When used to stabilize a distributed feedback laser at 795 nm, the frequency Allan deviation at 1000 s drops from 5.6 × 10(-8) to 6.9 × 10(-10). The performance equals t...

Our recent paper reports the experimental realization of a one-atom laser in a regime of strong coupling [J. McKeever, A. Boca, A. D. Boozer, J. R. Buck, and H. J. Kimble, Nature (London) 425, 268 (2003)]. Here we provide the supporting theoretical analysis relevant to the operating regime of our experiment. By way of a simplified four-state model, we investigate the passage from the domain of ...

Cobalt-doped ZnO samples were prepared by both sol-gel and magnetron sputtering methods, respectively. Co atoms have incorporated into the ZnO lattice and located at the substitutional sites of the Zn atoms in all samples, while the sol-gel prepared Zn1-xCoxO samples show paramagnetism and the sputtering prepared CoyZn1yO samples appear ferromagnetism. The calculated O K-edge X-ray absorption n...

The origin of chirality, closely related to the evolution of life on the earth, has long been debated. In 1991, Abdus Salam suggested a novel approach to achieve biomolecular homochirality by a phase transition. In his subsequent publication, he predicted that this phase transition could eventually change D-amino acids to L-amino acids as Cα -H bond would break and H atom became a superconducti...

Valence correlation consistent and augmented correlation consistent basis sets have been determined for the third row, main group atoms gallium through krypton. The methodology, originally developed for the first row atoms, was first applied to the selenium atom, resulting in the expected natural groupings of correlation functions ~although higher angular momentum functions tend to be relativel...

We have constructed an atom interferometer of the Mach-Zehnder type, operating with a supersonic beam of lithium. Atom diffraction uses Bragg diffraction on laser standing waves. With first order diffraction, our apparatus has given a large signal and a very good fringe contrast (74%), which we believe to be the highest ever observed with thermal atom interferometers. This apparatus will be app...

A number of laser-induced fluorescence and absorption spectroscopy studies have been conducted using Gaseous Electronics Conference Reference Cells. Laser-induced fluorescence has been used to measure hydrogen atom densities, to measure argon metastable spatial profiles, to determine the sheath electric field, and to infer the electron density and temperature. Absorption spectroscopy, using lam...

When the outer electron of an alkali atom in an electric field is laser excited just above the field-induced ionization threshold, the electron ejection will not be instantaneous. Calculations show there are a number of energy regions where, upon short-pulse laser excitation, the atom will eject a train of electron probability pulses with the pulses being nearly equally spaced in time. This sys...

We report the creation of a Bose-Einstein condensate using buffer-gas cooling, the first realization of BEC using a broadly general method which relies neither on laser cooling nor unique atom-surface properties. Metastable helium (He*) is buffer-gas cooled, magnetically trapped, and evaporatively cooled to quantum degeneracy. 10 atoms are initially trapped, leading to Bose-Einstein condensatio...

Laser cooling and ion trapping have progressed to such an extent that one can now speak of realizing a confined atom at absolute zero temperature. In this short publication, we analyze an experiment toward such realization using a single Ba(+) ion in a miniature rf trap. The Ba(+) ion is first laser-cooled to the limit where the ion spends most of its time in the zero-point energy state. Then a...