Design and construction of a spin-flip Zeeman slower for cooling lithium-6
Task: Simulate, plan and build a spin-flip Zeeman slower to cool down a hot beam of atomic lithium-6. Before we can capture atoms in a magneto-optical trap they must be slowed down and cooled. A spin-flip Zeeman slower slower can efficiently slow down atoms from several hundreds m/s to almost 0. An optimal field configuration for lithium-6 has to be found, the magnets and their respective cooling system have to be built and subsequently the cooled atom beam has to be analyzed.
Field of study: lasers, optics, electronics, magnets
Implementation of a digital servo for feedback control of our laser systems
Task: Frequency stabilization of external cavity diode lasers is very important in atomic physics, where laser line-widths of less than a MHz are required. The goal of this project is to set up and implement a FPGA based digital lock-box in our current control system.
(High-field) absorption imaging of ultra-cold lithium atoms
Task: Determination of the ion number, size and ion number density of ultra-cold atoms are nowadays a versatile tool to determine the properties of ultra-cold atoms confined in a magneto-optical trap. The standard technique relies on the imaging of the atoms by absorption spectroscopy and imaging the shadow of an atom cloud on a CCD-camera. We are looking for a highly motivated student to set up this method in our apparatus.
Fields of study: diode lasers, coding (MATLAB, Python or C++), optics, image and data analysis
Contact: Marcel Willig (mwillig[a]uni-mainz.de).
Design and analysis of a magnetic trap for lithium
Task: To cool hydrogen in a cold lithium atomic cloud, a high-density trap for lithium with a large trap volume is required. Therefore, a magnetic trap must first be designed, simulated and then tested using a cold lithium beam and laser spectroscopy.
Fields of study: magnetic fields, simulation, cold atomic beams, laser spectroscopy
Contact: Gregor Schwendler (grschwen[a]uni-mainz.de)
Time-of-Flight measurement on a cold hydrogen beam
Task: The velocity distribution of a (cryogenic) hydrogen beam can be characterized with the time-of-flight technique. The hydrogen beam is to be periodically interrupted, shaped with skimmers and pinholes and finally detected using a residual gas analyzer. Goal of this project is to determine the velocity distribution for different beam configurations (atomic/molecular, hot/cold).
Fields of study: vacuum techniques, mass spectrometry, kryogenics
Design and simulation of a magnetic trap for atomic hydrogen
Task: The low-field seeker ground-state hydrogen atoms can be trapped in a magnetic minimum. The goal of this work is to design and simulate a (permanent) magnet configuration to trap the low-velocity fraction of a cryogenic atomic hydrogen source beam prepared by a curved magnetic quadrupole guide. For trap loading, a magneto-optical trap with a cold cloud of lithium atoms acting as a buffer-gas has to be integrated in the system.
Field of study: magnetic fields, interactions of atoms with magnetic fields, coding (Python etc.)
Task: A highly selective detection of atomic hydrogen can be achieved by a two-photon excitation at 243 nm (1S-2S transition), followed by photoionization with a third UV-photon (2S ionization) and subsequent detection of the photoelectrons released. Goal of this project is to set up a 266 nm pulsed laser system to complement our existing 243 nm continous-wave laser – and/or a standalone 243 nm pulsed laser system. Either of these configurations can then be used to demonstrate the detection of hydrogen atoms via ionizations in our apparatus.
Field of study: laser technology, detector physics
Contact: Hendrik Schürg (h.schuerg[a]uni-mainz.de)
If you have an own idea for a project in mind that you would like to do in our group, please feel free to contact us!
