Physics 250, Spring 2006

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The Budker Group in Mainz

Special topics in Atomic Physics: Interaction of Atoms with Polarized Light

When and where: TuTh 11-12:30, location: 56 Barrows

Format: two 1.5-hr class meetings per week (student participation strongly encouraged); discussion on individual basis (by appointment)

Instructor: Professor Dmitry Budker

Office hour: Teusdays, 2-3, or by appointment; in 273 Birge

Course credit will be given on the basis of the homework (50%) and oral presentations (50%). Each student is required to make at least one presentation during the semester; more presentations are encouraged! A brief one-page (professionally formatted and edited) abstract of the presentation should be turned in at the time of presentation. Please include the presenter's name and the date of the presentation in the abstract. The abstract should be composed as if it was for a talk to be presented at the American Physical Society meeting, and should give your colleagues a convincing reason to attend your talk. It should contain important key-words that will help them identify the subject area of your research and the most important result(s) to be presented.

Synopsis of the course:

This course will consist of two components:

1. Lectures based on a new textbook by M. Auzinsh, D. Budker, and S. M. Rochester (in preparation);

2. Discussion of selected "hot" topics in AMO physics along the lines of what was done in previous years: Physics 250 (Spring 2000).

The course is open for both graduate and advanced undergraduate students.

Tentative course outline:

  • Motivation and preliminaries
  • Atomic states
  • Atoms in external electric and magnetic fields
  • Polarized light
  • Atomic transitions
  • Coherence in atoms
  • Density matrix
  • “Maxwell-Bloch” equations?
  • Examples

Required text: none

Recommended texts (general):

  1. Bransden & Joachain, PHYSICS OF ATOMS AND MOLECULES, 2nd edition, Longman
  2. D. Budker, D. F. Kimball, and D. P. DeMille, Atomic Physics. An Exploration through Problems and Solutions, Oxford University Press, 2004 [ISBN:0198509499, 0198509502 (pbk.); Physics QC776 .B83 2004)] (Click here)
  3. Foot, C.J., ATOMIC PHYSICS, Oxford

Recommended texts (good textbooks on specific subfields):

  1. C. Cohen-Tannoudji, Atoms in Electromagnetic Fields, 2nd ed., World Scientific, 2004.

Physics (and not-quite-physics) bed-time reading:

  1. Charles H. Townes, How the Laser Happened: Adventures of a Scientist, Oxford University Press, 1999 (ISBN: 0195122682)
  2. Seabrook, W. Doctor Wood, Modern Wizard of the Laboratory. New York, Harcourt, Brace and company, 1941 (Physics Library QC16.W6 S4)
  3. Margarita Ryutova-Kemoklidze, The Quantum Generation: Highlights and Tragedies of the Golden Age of Physics, Springer Verlag, 1995 (ISBN: 0387532986)
  4. Segrè, Emilio. A Mind Always in Motion: The Autobiography of Emilio Segre. Berkeley: University of California Press, c1993.

News flash!

Seminars and Colloquia

Lecture Notes, Viewgraphs, Electronic Tutorials

Assorted Physics-Related Links, Web Resources

Individual research topics and presentations:

  • Towards an electronic kilogram by Victor M. Acosta
  • Cavity ring-down spectroscopy (before and after frequency combs) by Kater Murch
  • Feshbach resonances in ultracold atoms by Lorraine E. Sadler
  • High-harmonic generation by Corin Michael Ricardo Greaves
  • Casimir Effect by Eric Corsini
  • Light-Induced Drift (LID) of atoms
  • Modern Optical Parametric Oscillators as light sources for spectroscopy
  • Superfluorescence
  • Discovery of the Lamb shift
  • Most recent precision measurements of Lamb shift in hydrogen
  • Electromagnetically-induced transparency
  • Resarch with antiatoms
  • How does gravity affect anti-matter (a survey of past, present, and planned experiments)
  • Gravitation measurements with atomic interferometers
  • Chaos in atoms
  • Laser spectroscopy of neutral clusters
  • Circular states in atoms
  • Atomic-beam scattering from solid surfaces: from the Stern/Esterman experiment [Z. Phys. 61, 95 (1930)] and on
  • Precision experiments with muonic atoms
  • Spin and orbital angular momentum of light beams
  • Femtosecond-Laser Frequency Combs for Optical Metrology
  • Novel artificial "atoms": whispering gallery-mode resonators, microdisks, photonic-bandgap cavities
  • Measurements of magnetic-field direction in plasma using the Stark shift induced by the vxB electric fields
  • Spinor Bose-Einstein condensates (see, e.g., work at MIT and Berkeley)
  • Make up your own topic !

Homework:

Acknowledgment and Disclaimer: This material is based in part upon work supported by the National Science Foundation. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recomendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation (NSF).