Light Storage and Retrieval with Nuclear Spin and a Study of Anisotropic Inelastic Collisions
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University of Nevada, Reno Light storage and retrieval with nuclear spin and a study of anisotropic inelastic collisions A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Physics by Mei-Ju Lu Dr. Jonathan D. Weinstein/Dissertation Advisor May 2011 c 2011 - Mei-Ju Lu All rights reserved. THE GRADUATE SCHOOL We recommend that the dissertation prepared under our supervision by MEI-JU LU entitled Light storage and retrieval with nuclear spin and a study of anisotropic inelastic collisions be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Jonathan D. Weinstein, Ph.D., Advisor Ronald A. Phaneuf, Ph.D., Committee Member Peter Winkler, Ph.D., Committee Member Robert S. Sheridan, Ph.D., Committee Member Joseph I. Cline, Ph.D., Graduate School Representative Marsha H. Read, Ph. D., Associate Dean, Graduate School May, 2011 i Abstract Helium buffer-gas cooling is combined with laser ablation to produce large num- bers of atoms and molecules at a cryogenic temperature. Absorption spectroscopy is employed to observe the target species and optical pumping is used to manipulate them. In this thesis, the first observation of electromagnetically induced transparency 1 (EIT) in a sample of ground-state ( S0) atomic ytterbium at 6 K is reported. The transparency is produced due to coherence between the optical field and the nuclear spin state of the 173Yb nucleus. Because the nuclear spin states interact very weakly with their environment they are resistant to decoherence due to inelastic collisions and inhomogeneous fields. Consequently, atomic ensembles of pure nuclear spin states may be a superior medium for a variety of nonlinear optics and quantum information experiments. For example, the information carried by a light pulse is stored in the 1 173 nuclear spin of ground-state ( S0) Yb by using EIT. Storage times of hundreds of milliseconds are observed at 4 K in our system, which has a competitive performance compared to other systems using electronic spin. The second topic of this thesis is the cold atom-helium collisions which are not only important for the fundamental studies, but also help to explore the field of ultracold atoms. A combined experimental and theoretical study of angular momen- tum depolarization in cold collisions of 2P -state atoms is presented. It is shown 2 o that collision-induced Zeeman relaxation of ground-state ( P1=2) gallium and indium 4 2 o atoms in cold He gas is dramatically small compared to atoms in P3=2 states. These 2 o results suggest the feasibility of sympathetic cooling and magnetic trapping of P1=2- state atoms. The inelastic collisions between cold titanium atoms and helium gas 2 2 3 cause transitions between the fine-structure levels of the 3d 4s FJ electronic ground ii state of atomic titanium over a temperature range from 5 to 20 K. The Ti-He in- elastic collision cross-section is significantly smaller than cross-sections measured for collisions of non-transition-metal atoms with noble gas atoms. The theoretical cal- culations of the inelastic cross-sections reproduce the magnitude and temperature dependence of the measurements, and attribute the suppression of inelastic collisions to titanium's \submerged" d-shell valence electrons. 3 Finally, large numbers of X ∆1 TiO molecules at a translational temperature of 5 K are generated. Their cold collisions with helium, including their elastic and inelastic scattering cross-sections, are investigated and measured. As expected for 3∆ molecules, which have large spin-rotation couplings, TiO's inelastic m-changing collision cross-section is large: on the same order as its momentum transfer cross- section. iii Citations to Previously Published Work Portions of this thesis have appeared previously in the following papers: \Fine-structure changing collisions in atomic titanium", Mei-Ju Lu, Kyle S. Hardman, Jonathan D. Weinstein, and Bernard Zygelman, Physical Review A 77, 060701(R) (2008) \Cold TiO-He collisions", Mei-Ju Lu and Jonathan D. Weinstein, New Journal of Physics 11, 055015 (2009) 2 \Suppression of Zeeman relaxation in cold collisions of P1=2 atoms", T. V. Tscherbul, A. A. Buchachenko, A. Dalgarno, M.-J. Lu, and J. D. We- instein, Physical Review A 80, 040701(R) (2009) \Electromagetically induced transparency with nuclear spin", Mei-Ju Lu and Jonathan D. Weinstein, Optics Letters 35, 622 (2010) \Stopped light with a cryogenic ensemble of 173Yb atoms", Mei-Ju Lu, Franklin Jose, and Jonathan D. Weinstein, Physical Review A 82, 061802 (2010) iv Dedicated to my parents, my sister Helen, and my brother Kevin. 獻 給 我 的、 父 佳 母 倫 親。 與 青 鴻 v Acknowledgements It is my pleasure to acknowledge people who are very important to my academic studies. I am deeply grateful to my advisor, Prof. Jonathan Weinstein, for his teaching, patience, guidance, and providing me excellent research opportunities. With his abundant knowledge and thoughtful personality, I enjoyed every second of being his student. I would like to acknowledge members of Weinstein Lab for their collaboration with me in this thesis. I thank Kyle Hardman for his work on the cryogenic system and diode laser projects; Vijay Singh, for his work on the titanium experiment; Franklin Jose, for his work on the Yb sputtering cell; Muir Morrison, for his work on the PID circuits; Matt Karam, for his work on the imaging system. I show appreciation to Tian Li and Ryan Baker for their work on the Yb experiment, and Aja Ellis for her work on the cold molecule experiment. Without the effort and support from these incredible people, this thesis could not be accomplished. I show my true gratitude to my teachers and people in the society of physics who have taught and helped me. Finally, I would like to thank my family and friends for their love and encouragements. vi Contents Abstract.....................................i Citations to Previously Published Work................... iii Dedication.................................... iv Acknowledgements...............................v Contents..................................... vi List of Tables..................................x List of Figures.................................. xi List of Acronyms................................ xiv 1 Introduction1 1.1 Buffer-gas cooling.............................1 1.2 Collisions.................................5 1.2.1 Elastic collisions.........................5 1.2.2 Inelastic collisions.........................6 1.2.3 Reactive collisions.........................6 1.3 Inelastic collisions of atoms........................7 1.3.1 Spin-exchange...........................8 1.3.2 Dipolar relaxation........................9 1.4 Inelastic collisions of diatomic molecules................ 12 1.4.1 Cold and ultracold molecules.................. 13 1.4.2 Σ-state molecules......................... 13 1.4.3 Non-Σ-state molecules...................... 15 1.5 Electromagnetically induced transparency............... 17 1.5.1 EIT application.......................... 19 2 Apparatus 23 2.1 Design of the cryostat.......................... 23 2.1.1 The assembly of the cryostat................... 25 vii 2.1.2 Targets.............................. 30 2.1.3 Improvements........................... 30 2.2 Measurements of temperature and pressure............... 31 2.2.1 Temperature measurements................... 31 2.2.2 Pressure measurements...................... 33 2.3 Lasers................................... 36 2.3.1 Ablation laser........................... 36 2.3.2 Diode laser............................ 38 2.4 Data acquisition system......................... 41 3 Ytterbium 44 3.1 Long-lived coherent optically dense media............... 44 3.1.1 A pure nuclear spin system|J = 0 atoms........... 45 3.2 Yb information.............................. 46 3.3 Yb spectrum............................... 47 3.4 Diffusion lifetimes and yields....................... 51 3.5 Yb collisional properties......................... 54 3.5.1 Optical pumping......................... 54 3.5.2 The T1 time measurements.................... 57 3.5.3 The T2 time measurements.................... 60 3.6 EIT with nuclear spin.......................... 64 3.6.1 Dark state concepts........................ 64 3.6.2 173Yb EIT............................. 65 3.6.3 EIT with near-collinear beams.................. 67 3.6.4 EIT with collinear degenerate beams.............. 68 4 Slow and stopped light with nuclear spin 77 4.1 Atom-photon coupling.......................... 77 4.2 Frequency stabilization.......................... 79 4.2.1 Doppler-free DAVLL signal................... 80 4.2.2 Frequency lock.......................... 83 4.3 Slow light................................. 85 4.3.1 Experimental details....................... 86 4.3.2 Problems at high OD0 ...................... 92 4.4 Stopped light............................... 94 4.4.1 Methods.............................. 95 viii 4.4.2 Light-storage lifetimes...................... 97 4.4.3 Storage efficiency......................... 104 4.4.4 Towards quantum memory.................... 105 5 Atom-He collisions 107 5.1 Ga-He and In-He............................. 108 5.1.1 Spectroscopic structures..................... 108 5.1.2 Inelastic collisions......................... 111 5.2 Ti-He collisions.............................. 121 5.2.1 Significance to astrophysics................... 122 5.2.2 Titanium spectrum........................ 124 5.2.3 Fine-structure-changing collisions................ 125 5.2.4 Experimental and theoretical results.............