Category: Cold Atoms

Laser-Cooled Atoms: Strontium

L to R, strontium crystals, images of BEC in strontium, and an electron shell diagram (which, like the crystals, is from Wikimedia).

Element: Strontium (Sr) Atomic Number: 38 Mass: Four stable isotopes, ranging from 84 to 88 amu Laser cooling wavelength: Two different transitions are used in the laser cooling of strontium: a blue line at 461 nm that’s an ordinary sort of transition, and an exceptionally narrow “intercombination” line at 689 nm. Doppler cooling limit: 770… Continue reading Laser-Cooled Atoms: Strontium

Laser-Cooled Atoms: Xenon

L to R, a comic cover from the comic bok periodic table, a graph from my Ph. D. thesis, and an electron shell diagram from Wikipedia.

Element: Xenon (Xe) Atomic Number: 54 Mass: nine “stable” isotopes, masses from 124 to 136 amu. Xenon-136 is technically radioactive, but with a half-life of a hundred billion billion years, so, you know, it’s pretty much stable. Laser cooling wavelength: 882 nm Doppler cooling limit: 120 μK Chemical classification: Noble gas, part of column VIII… Continue reading Laser-Cooled Atoms: Xenon

Laser-Cooled Atoms: Helium

L to R, an image from Up (taken from this blog post), the helium trap at the University of Amsterdam, and an electron shell diagram of He from Wikimedia.

Element: Helium (He) Atomic Number: 2 Mass: two stable isotopes, 3 and 4 amu. Laser cooling wavelength: 1083 nm Doppler cooling limit: 38 μK (It should be noted, though, that despite the low temperature, laser-cooled helium has a relatively high velocity– that Doppler limit corresponds to an average velocity that’s just about the same as… Continue reading Laser-Cooled Atoms: Helium

Laser-Cooled Atoms: Rubidium

L to R: Rubidium metal, the first Rb BEC, and an electron shell diagram of Rb. Images from wikimedia and NIST.

Element: Rubidium (Rb) Atomic Number: 37 Mass: two “stable” isotopes, 85 and 87 amu (rubidium-87 is technically radioactive, but it’s half-life is 48 billion years, so it might as well be stable for atomic physics purposes. Laser cooling wavelength: 780 nm Doppler cooling limit: 140 μK Chemical classification: Alkali metal, column I of the periodic… Continue reading Laser-Cooled Atoms: Rubidium

Laser-Cooled Atoms: Sodium

L to R, sodim metal, sodium optical molasses, and an electron shell diagram of sodium. Images from Wikimedia/ NIST.

Element: Sodium (Na) Atomic Number: 11 Mass: one stable isotope, 23 amu Laser cooling wavelength: 589 nm Doppler cooling limit: 240 μK Chemical classification: Alkali metal, column I of the periodic table. Like the majority of elements, it’s a greyish metal at room temperature. Like the other alkalis, it’s highly reactive, and bursts into flame… Continue reading Laser-Cooled Atoms: Sodium

Know Your Laser-Cooled Atoms

A somewhat outdated slide highlighting elements that have been laser cooled.

At the tail end of the cold-atom toolbox series, I joked about doing a “trading card” version shortening the posts to a more web-friendly length. In idly thinking about this, though, it occurred to me that if one were going to have cold-atom trading cards, it might make more sense to have them for the… Continue reading Know Your Laser-Cooled Atoms