Student Research in the Bergeson/Durfee Lab

The vast majority of the work done in our lab is done by students, mostly undergraduates.  On this page some of the work of our students is highlighted.

Undergraduates

James Archibald

James did a lot of work to characterize the feedback response of our high stability laser in order to improve the laser's lock to a high-finesse cavity.  He has recently been working on developing standardized electronics for diode laser.

You can view some of James' work in a poster we presented at DAMOP 2006 and another we presented at DAMOP 2007.
 

Jeremey Birrell

Jeremey is developing a blue laser system which will be used to transversely cool and detect calcium atoms in our interferometer.  This laser system will consist of a grating-stabilized laser diode which is amplified in a semiconductor amplifier.  This light will then be frequency doubled in a nonlinear crystal in a build-up cavity.

You can view some of Jeremey's work in a poster our group presented at DAMOP 2007.
 

Daniel Merrill

Dan is developing lasers and optical equipment for a new lab course that all of our undergraduate physics majors will take, beginning in Winter 2007. His work includes the development of inexpensive diode lasers and electronics with sufficient stability for Doppler-free spectroscopy, inexpensive vapor cells for iodine spectroscopy, and inexpensive optical cavities.
 

Matthew Gardner

Matthew just joined our group this week, and has not been assigned a project yet.
 

Graduate Students

Chris Erickson

Chris is started in my lab as an undergraduate.  His senior thesis was on a high-temperature calcium vapor cell.  This cell is used to produce the very dense calcium vapors necessary to significantly absorb light from a laser tuned to the 657 nm intercombination line in calcium.  This work is discussed in "A high temperature calcium vapor cell for spectroscopy on the 4s^{2 1}S₀ to 4s4p ³P₁ intercombination line" and was featured in the poster Chris presented with Brian and Rebecca at DAMOP 2004 and the  poster he presented with Justin and Brian at DAMOP 2005.  More of Chris' work is shown in this poster he presented at DAMOP 2007.  Chris was one of five undergraduate students selected to receive a fellowship to present his work at the annual meeting of DAMOP in 2005.

After finishing his undergraduate degree, Chris decided pursue an advanced degree with me.  He has been working to manage the work done by the undergraduates in the lab, has designed, constructed, and tested various pieces of electronics, optics, and vacuum equipment, and basically taken charge of the atom interferometer experiment.  He recently defended his master's thesis, and is currently working on his PhD.
 

Former Students

Matt Washburn

Matt worked to measure the Bode plot of our high-stability diode laser in order to help design a better feedback controller for it. This work has been accepted for publication in a reviewed conference proceeding. Matt also constructed and did initial testing of a detector designed by Brian Neyenhuis. We expect to publish his work on the new detector in Reveiw of Scientific Instruments in the next month or two. Matt received a fellowship to present his work at the annual meeting of the Optical Society of America (OSA) in 2006.  Matt is currently finishing a degree in Electrical Engineering and has (sadly but not unreasonably) left our group to focus on his major.  Matt is pictured here with his wife Pamela.  This picture was taken last winter at our lab party at the Erickson's cabin.

You can view some of Matt's work in a poster he presented at DAMOP 2006 and in a poster our group presented at DAMOP 2007.
 

Adam Burdett

Adam worked for a time assisting Jeremey Birrell on a frequency-doubled diode laser.  Adam contributed to work presented by our group at DAMOP 2007.
 

Dan Christensen

Dan designed and tested an atomic beam oven.  He also performed a numerical study related to a proposal to search for a possible photon rest mass with an ion interferometer.  Dan received a fellowship to present his work at OSA in 2006.  He recently started graduate work at the University of Rochester.

Some of Dan's work is featured in this poster that he presented at DAMOP 2007.  I took this picture during an excursion to Banff National Forest which we took right after the conference.  His work is featured in "Testing non-classical theories of electromagnetism with ion interferometry" and in "Numerical calculation of classical and non-classical electrostatic potentials."
 

Marshall Van Zijll

Marshall, a dual major in computer science, developed the hardware and software for a digital controller for a laser current source designed by Greg Doermann.  This digital controller increased the stability of the current source.

You can view some of Marshall's work in a poster our group presented at DAMOP 2007.
 

Brian Neyenhuis

Early on in his work with me, Brian designed a vacuum chamber and isolation box for an optical reference cavity.  This cavity, which will serve as a "fly wheel" for an atomic clock, has to be held at a constant temperature and pressure and must be isolated from mechanical vibrations.  Brian also worked on understanding the nuances of a new diode laser design developed in our lab and worked to collect data to verify our model of how the laser works.  He also experimented with a new diode laser scheme of his own.  He used one of these lasers to help Chris Erickson characterize a high-temperature calcium vapor cell (see "A high temperature calcium vapor cell for spectroscopy on the 4s^{2 1}S₀ to 4s4p ³P₁ intercombination line").  Later on, Brian worked on locking a diode laser to an ultra-high finesse optical cavity to achieve a very narrow linewidth.  This work included developing high-frequency, low-noise detectors and feedback controllers.  He also came up with an idea to use ion interferometry to search for a possible photon rest mass, and worked with me to critically analyze the idea and calculate optimized experimental parameters for such an experiment. This work is discussed in "Testing non-classical theories of electromagnetism with ion interferometry" and in "Numerical calculation of classical and non-classical electrostatic potentials."  Brian was one of five undergraduate students nationwide which was selected to receive a fellowship to present his work at the annual meeting of the APS Division of Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics (DAMOP) in 2006, and he received fellowships to present at OSA in 2004 and 2005. Brian was a Hertz fellowship finalist and received an NSF fellowship for graduate school, and is currently working on a Ph.D. with Deborah Jin at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

If you want, you can take a look at the posters Brian presented at DAMOP 2004, DAMOP 2005, and DAMOP 2006.  Brian was also featured on the web page of BYU's Office of Research and Creative Activities.
 

Justin Paul

Justin worked on various aspects of the atom interferometer project.  He took over Rebecca Olson's prism measurement work and extended it such that it would work on right-angle and corner-cube prisms for both absolute as well as relative measurements.  His work is detailed in "Self-referenced prism deflection measurement schemes with microradian precision."  Justin also worked on vacuum components and ultra-stable mounts for optics are used in the atom interferometer, and to characterize a calcium atomic beam.  Justin is currently pursuing a Ph.D. at the University of Arizona, one of the top schools in optical physics.

Some of Justin's work is shown in the poster he presented at DAMOP 2005.
 

Greg Doermann

Greg worked on a new higher-stability lower-noise current supply for our diode lasers.  After graduation, he went to work for HR Textron (on munitions guidance systems, I believe).

Some of Greg's work is shown in a poster which was presented by Brian, Chris, and Justin at DAMOP 2005.
 

Rebecca Tang (Formerly Rebecca Merrill)

Rebecca came up a new way to stabilize a diode laser with a grating.  It combines the benefits of the two widely used methods.  She implemented her method to make a narrow linewidth laser at 657 nm and worked with me to find a theory which would explain what was happening when the laser was tuned.  This work was published (see "Increasing the Output of a Littman-Type Laser by Use of an Intracavity Faraday Rotator" on my publications page). After serving a mission in the Netherlands, she did initial work on a 423nm laser system.  Rebecca received a fellowship to present her work at the annual OSA meeting in 2005.  She graduated with honors in 2006 and is now dedicated full-time to raising her daughter.

Some of Rebecca's work was presented in a poster at DAMOP 2003.
 

Jared Daily

Jared  really knows his way around the machine shop, and in addition to his own work he did a considerable amount of work assisting other students design and construct difficult pieces of their experiments.  Jared worked on optical dipole traps for calcium atoms using light from an argon ion laser (see "Two-photon photo-ionization of the Ca 4s3d ¹D₂ level in an optical dipole trap"), and on using fluorescence imaging to explore the dynamics of ultracold plasmas (see  "Fluorescence Measurements of Expanding Strongly Coupled Neutral Plasmas" and "Ultracold neutral plasma expansion in two dimensions").

As a side note, Jared told us at DAMOP 2004 that his goal for the conference was to play Frisbee with a Nobel Laureate, and we did.  In fact, here is a picture of Eric Cornell playing Frisbee with us.
 

Beth Cummings

Beth began as an undergraduate in our group and then completed a Master's degree in our group.  As an undergraduate she developed an injection-locked Ti:Sapphire laser which produced one Watt of single mode, single frequency infrared light with only 5 Watts of pump power.  This work was published in Applied Optics (see http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0112014).  This laser will be used as an upgrade to the laser system used to cool and trap calcium atoms.  For her graduate thesis she worked on the problem of imaging ions in an ultra-cold calcium plasma in order to determine how the plasma evolves in time.  This work is featured in two publications: "Ultracold neutral plasma expansion in two dimensions," and "Fluorescence measurements of expanding strongly-coupled neutral plasmas."  She also contributed to Jared Daily's thesis work (see "Two-photon photo-ionization of the Ca 4s3d ¹D₂ level in an optical dipole trap").
 

Rebecca Olson

Rebecca Olson started off in our lab working on two projects: the implementation of a Pound-Drever-Hall scheme to lock our 657 nm laser to a high-finesse, high-stability optical cavity and performing calculations to determine requirements on the precision prisms to be used in the atomic clock.  She also assisted Rebecca Merrill with the development of a new diode laser design (see "Increasing the Output of a Littman-Type Laser by Use of an Intracavity Faraday Rotator."  Upon receiving the custom prisms which Rebecca had designed, she developed a unique method to verify the quality of the prisms using optical interferometry.  This method utilized inexpensive components which we had on hand to achieve phenomenal precision, measuring beam deflections with microradian precision.  As part of this work she developed software to acquire data and to curve fit and reliably extrapolate for increased precision.  Her work is featured in "Self-referenced prism deflection measurement schemes with microradian precision."  Rebecca graduated in 2004 and is currently pursuing a graduate degree in physics at the University of Maryland. 

Some of Rebecca's work can be seen in posters we presented at DAMOP 2003 and DAMOP 2004.
 

Patrick Turley

Patrick performed measurements and calculations to see if it is feasible to use blackbody radiation to improve the lifetime of a magneto optical trap (MOT).  The idea is to replace an expensive and complicated laser which has to be locked to an excited-state transition with a simple light-bulb filament.  Preliminary results suggest that it may be possible, but will require the filament to be in close proximity to the atoms.
 

Jay Eyring

Jay worked on various aspects of stabilizing and diagnosing diode lasers.  He explored different materials to use as an anti-reflective coating on the front facet of diode lasers to improve the tuning range and stability of grating stabilized lasers.  He also constructed several Fabry-Perot spectrum analyzers which we use to determine whether a laser is running in a single mode.  After doing some good work in our lab, he was asked to work on a consulting project developing spectrometers which no invasively measure levels of vitamins in the skin.
 

Ralph Gommers

Ralph visited our group for the summer of 2004.  He worked on various things including our attempts to create and characterize an optical dipole trap for calcium atoms (see "Two-photon photo-ionization of the Ca 4s3d ¹D₂ level in an optical dipole trap"). 
 

Kendrick Taylor

Kendrick spent several months in our lab designing and debugging a low-noise, high bandwidth photo-detector, prior to graduating with a degree from the department of Electrical Engineering.
 

Bonnie McLaughlin

Bonnie is worked on a green laser to pump other lasers in the lab.  The laser uses a 30 Watt fiber coupled array of diode lasers (the gold box at the bottom left of the picture) to pump a neodymium doped vanadate crystal.  The vanadate crystal,  placed inside of a Z-shaped linear cavity, generates infrared laser light inside the cavity.  A nonlinear crystal is placed in one arm of the cavity to double the frequency of the infrared light and produce green light.  This light escapes through a mirror which was designed to be highly reflective for the infrared, but transparent to the green light.  The laser has been able to produce up to 2 Watts in a single spatial mode.  Bonnie graduated from BYU in 2004 and is currently pursuing a graduate degree at the University of Utah.
 

Richard Sandburg

Richard built some parts for the laser which Bonnie McLaughlin constructed.
 

Will Ashby

Will developed an inexpensive “lab standard” low frequency signal generator. He is now pursuing an advanced degree in medical physics at Vanderbilt University.
 

Joe Hopper

Joe worked on several projects in our group including working out a series of calculations to determine parameters for the construction of a large vacuum chamber which will be used for our new atomic clock and synchronizing the sequence of events required to trap, cool, ionize, and then image a cloud of calcium.  In this photo he is standing next to a laser system which will be used to make absorption images of calcium ions.  Joe left our group to work with J. Ward Moody on an autonomous telescope project.
 

James Brady

James spent some time working on a thermal atomic beam source.
 

Sean Brady

Sean worked as an REU student with us one summer.  He worked on seeding a pulsed Ti:sapphire laser.
 

Jason Ard

Jason spent several months developing software and assisting other students.
 

Ribeka Takahashi

Ribeka worked on rf oscillators and amplifiers to drive acousto-optic modulators.
 

Eva Wilcox

Eva constructed a light-baffle and mount for a photo-multiplier tube.
 

Matt Cannon

Matt started off in our lab working on a lab standard for extremely stable and quiet current and temperature controllers for diode lasers.  His work has resulted in a proven design which can be quickly and reliably duplicated any time we need to add a diode laser to our experiments.  He recently completed a masters degree in physics at RICE University, and is continuing on for a PhD.
 

Rosie Wilcox

Rosie did some work on the construction of a grating-stabilized diode laser.
 

And the rest...

We have also had several high school teachers work in our lab over the summer.  These include:

© Dallin S. Durfee 2004