Stuttgart 2012 – scientific programme

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A: Fachverband Atomphysik

A 34: Kalte Atome: Manipulation und Detektion

A 34.3: Talk

Thursday, March 15, 2012, 14:30–14:45, V7.03

Temperature measurement of ultracold atoms using electromagnetically induced transparency — •Frank Blatt¹, Benjamin Wittrock¹, Thorsten Peters¹, Leonid Yatsenko², and Thomas Halfmann¹ — ¹Institut für Angewandte Physik, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Hochschulstraße 6, 64289 Darmstadt — ²Institute of Physics, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Prospect Nauki 46, Kiev-39, 03650, Ukraine

Determination of temperatures in ultracold atomic clouds is a crucial requirement for many experiments in quantum optics. Temperature determination is typically realized by time-of-flight (TOF) measurements. The latter is easy to implement and precise - but also slow and destructive to the atomic cloud.

In this talk we present experimental results on temperature measurements in an ultracold atomic cloud by electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). We compare the data to numerical simulations, as well as temperature measurements by TOF. As an important feature in EIT with two counter propagating beams, the absorption of the probe beam depends on the Doppler broadening, i.e. the temperature of the medium. This enables determination of temperatures from rather simple EIT spectra. The technique is robust, fast and does not destroy or perturb the atomic cloud.