Apparatus
Our apparatus starts from the vacuum system (chronologically, anyway). On the left there is a design of the vacuum and a picture taken just after assembling it is on the right. The big tubes are for easier pumping and therefore better vacuum in the experimental chamber.
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The laser beams needed for the earlier stages are generated from two lasers, shown with their spectroscopy setups on the left. Outside the lasers box, the main beam (red) is divided into three beams - cooler, imaging and optical pumping. These beams are manipulated with AOMs and coupled into optical fibers. This is shown on the right.
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To show how the four laser beams are exciting the atomic transitions, we superpose the lasers frequencies on the 87Rb hyperfine structure. The inset compares absorption (top) to polarization (bottom) spectroscopy of the main beam.
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