Development of Optoelectronic Devices and Computational Tools for the Production and Manipulation of Heavy Rydberg Systems

Abstract

Experimental and theoretical progress has been made toward the production and manipulation of novel atomic and molecular states. The design, construction and characterization of a driver for an acousto-optic modulator is presented which achieves a maximum diffraction efficiency of 54 % at 200 MHz, using a commercial modulator. A novel design is presented for a highly sensitive optical spectrum analyzer for displaying laser mode structure in real time. Utilizing programmable microcontrollers to read data from a CMOS image sensor illuminated by the diffraction pattern from a Fabry-Perot interferometer, this device can operate with beam powers as low as 3.3 micro-watts, at a fraction of the cost of equivalent products. Computational results are presented analyzing the behaviour of a model quantum system in the vicinity of an avoided crossing. The results are compared with calculations based on the Landau-Zener formula, with discussion of its limitations. Further computational work is focused on simulating expected conditions in the implementation of the STIRAP technique for coherent control of atoms and molecules in the beam experiment. The work presented provides tools to further the aim of producing large, mono-energetic populations of heavy Rydberg systems.