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Abstract:
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General control of atoms and molecules has long been a goal for atomic physicists and physical chemists . Techniques such as laser cooling have been a huge breakthrough in studying ultra cold atoms and BECs . Although laser cooling has been a remarkable tool , it is limited to small group of atoms on the periodic table . A general technique to control and manipulate the entire periodic table has been out of reach until now . In this thesis I describe two methods of general control of atoms in the contexts of stopping supersonic beams and of isotope separation . Both these methods take advantage of high flux supersonic beams and the fact that every atom has a magnetic moment in the ground state or a long -lived excited state which can be manipulated using magnetic field gradients .
The first method uses a series of pulsed electomagnetic coils to slow and stop a supersonic beam of paramagnetic atoms and molecules . We have demonstrated the slowing of metastable neon and molecular oxygen using 64 coils from 446 .5 m /s to 55 .8 m /s for metastable neon , and from 389 m /s to 83 m /s for molecular oxygen respectively .
The second method is a novel and efficient approach to isotope separation which utilizes the concept of Maxwell's Demon . We call this technique Single -Photon Atomic Sorting as it is closely related to Single -Photon Cooling , a cooling technique developed in our laboratory . Our method uses a laser beam to change the magnetic moment to mass ratio in such a way that the desired isotopes are guided through a multi -pole magnetic field and collected . We show simulation results for various test cases which highlight the general applicability of this method . |