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March 15, 2005

3/15 — Class Review

Hey Class,

Pre-flights for next class are up!

Today we talked about:
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  1. Stimulated Raman transitions. We can drive Rabi oscillations between two ground states in a three-state system by applying light at two different frequencies. Adiabatic elimination is an approximation that lets us ignore the excited states. More or less, the beat frequency from the two beams drives the transition between ground states.

  2. Recoil. When atoms undergo stimulated Raman transitions, they recoil. This can be worked out from the semi-classical theory, but a photon picture becomes more useful. Recoil makes stimulated Raman transitions really useful for making atom interferometers.

Cheers,

Brian

Posted by Brian at March 15, 2005 03:12 PM

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