We have numerically investigated the biphoton generation rate as a function of several parameters in the sponta- neous four-wave mixing in cold atoms. It has been found that the biphoton generation rate can easily reach saturation with the intensity of the coupling laser increasing. The saturation intensity is mainly dependent on the dephasing rate of the ground states, unrelated to the pumping laser. It implies that though the biphoton waveform can be manipulated by the coupling laser, the generation rate of the biphoton cannot increase markedly after the saturation. The saturation effect also suggests that there is an optimal coupling laser for obtaining the largest biphoton generation rate with a sufficiently long coherence time.
We demonstrated a new method of atom detection by means of the magnetic optical effect. The number density of the atom cloud was measured by detecting the rotation angle of the polarization plane of linearly polarized probe light when propagating inside the atomic cloud. Detuning, the magnetic field and light intensity dependencies of the rotation angle were studied theoretically and experimentally to find the best parameter for atom detection. In this way, we managed to achieve a rotation angle of 0.22 rad with a signal to noise ratio （SNR） of 75 and a contrast of 87.5%.
We report the experimental investigation of electromagnetically induced transparency （EIT） in a Zeeman-sublevels A-type system of cold 87Rb atoms in free space. We use the Zeeman substates of the hyperfine energy states 52 S 1/2, F =- 2 and 52P3/2, F1 = 2 of 87Rb D2 line to form a A-type EIT scheme. The EIT signal is obtained by scanning the probe light over 1 MHz in 4 ms with an 80 MHz arbitrary waveform generator. More than 97% transparency and 100 kHz EIT window are observed. This EIT scheme is suited for an application of pulsed coherent storage atom clock （Yan B, et al. 2009 Phys. Rev. A 79 063820）.
We report a rapid evaporative cooling method using a hybrid trap which is composed of a quadrupole magnetic trap and a one-beam optical dipole trap. It contains two kinds of evaporative coolings to reach the quantum degeneracy： initial radio-frequency （RF） enforced evaporative cooling in the quadrupole magnetic trap and further runaway evaporative cooling in the optical dipole trap. The hybrid trap does not require a very high power laser such as that in the traditional pure optical trap, but still has a deep trap depth and a large trap volume, and has better optical access than the normal magnetic trap like the quadrupole-Ioffe-configuration （QUIC） cloverleaf trap. A high trap frequency can be easily realized in the hybrid trap to enhance the elastic collision rate and shorten the evaporative cooling time. In our experiment, pure Bose-Einstein condensates （BECs） with about 1 x 105 atoms can be realized in 6 s evaporative cooling in the optical dipole trap.
We report an experimental demonstration of a new scheme to split cold atoms on an atom chip. The atom chip consists of a U-wire and a Z-wire. The cold atom cloud is initially loaded and prepared in the Z-trap, which is split into two separate parts by switching on the current of the U-wire. The two separate atom clouds have a distance more than one millimeter apart from each other and show almost symmetrical profiles, corresponding to about a 50/50 splitting ratio.
Due to its low sensitivity to blackbody radiation, neutral mercury is a good candidate for the most accurate optical lattice clock. Here we report the observation of cold mercury atoms in a magneto-optical trap （MOT）. Because of the high vapor pressure at room temperature, the mercury source and the cold pump were cooled down to 40℃ and 70 ℃, respectively, to keep the science chamber in an ultra-high vacuum of 6×10^-9 Pa. Limited by the power of the UV cooling laser, the one beam folded MOT configuration was adopted, and 1.5×10^5 Hg-202 atoms were observed by fluorescence detection.
This work experimentally demonstrates a new method of optimizing the transport of cold atoms via modulating the velocity profile imposed on a magnetic quadrupole trap.The trap velocity and corresponding modulation are controlled by varying the currents of two pairs of anti-Helmholtz coils.Cold 87Rb atoms are transported in a non-adiabatic regime over 22 mm in 200 ms.For the transported atoms their final-vibration amplitude dependences of modulation period number,depth,and initial phase are investigated.With modulation period n = 5,modulation depth K = 0.55,and initial phase φ = 0,cold atom clouds with more atom numbers,smaller final-vibration amplitude,and lower temperature are efficiently transported.Theoretical analysis and numerical simulation are also provided,which are in good agreement with experimental results.
We experimentally observe polarization spectroscopy （PS） of the 1S0-3P1 transition of mercury atom gases at 253.7 nm. The PS signal can be observed in all six richly abundant isotopes and the PS signal of six transitions for laser cooling are all clear and of a dispersive line shape. The optimized pump power and probe power are found for the PS of 202 Hg. We find the linearly polarized component in the pump beam will distort the original P S signal due to the use of linear PS. Consequently, the purity of the pump beam is crucial to laser frequency stabilization by PS.
Polarization spectroscopy of the D lines of rubidium atoms is investigated experimentally,especially with different pump powers and cell temperatures.We find that there are four candidate transitions suitable for frequency stabilization,and optimal pump powers and cell temperatures are also presented to obtain a perfect signal with maximal amplitude and slope.The optimal signal is insensitive to the fluctuations of laser power and the temperature,which can enhance the performance of frequency locking.
