This thesis describes the advances made towards a dual-species magneto-optical trap (MOT) of Li and Rb for use in photoassociation spectroscopy, Feshbach resonance studies, and, as long-term aspirations, the formation of ultracold heteronuclear polar molecules. The initial discussion will focus on a brief theoretical overview of laser cooling and trapping and the production of ultracold molecules from a cold atom source. Subsequently, details of the experimental system, including those pertaining to the required laser light, the vacuum chamber, and the computer control system will be presented. Finally, preliminary optimization and characterization measurements showing the performance of a single species Li MOT are introduced. These measurements demonstrated the loading of over 8 x 107 Li atoms directly into a MOT without the need for a Zeeman slower. / Science, Faculty of / Physics and Astronomy, Department of / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UBC/oai:circle.library.ubc.ca:2429/2508 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Ladouceur, Keith |
| Publisher | University of British Columbia |
| Source Sets | University of British Columbia |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis/Dissertation |
| Format | 8530158 bytes, application/pdf |
| Rights | Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ |
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