Poster 36: We are working toward being able to trap and cool rubidium atoms with lasers. To achieve this, we send multiple intersecting laser beams into a vacuum chamber containing the atoms. The atoms are then trapped at the single intersection point of all the beams. To successfully cool the atoms, the incoming laser beams must have frequencies close to the atoms’ resonant frequency. We are updating our setup for locking the master laser, which will increase our confidence that the master laser is tuned appropriately to the resonant frequency. Once we are successful in laser cooling, we will focus on determining the velocity of the cold atoms through the time-of-flight method.
