Fall 2010/Spring 2011

Garrett Potter is working on the vacuum system and Zeeman slower for the calcium MOT as part of his senior capstone project. We are currently thinking about a slower with permanent magnets, similar to this paper by Ovchinnikov. Not having to wrap coils and run high currents through them with the potential danger of shorting them is very tempting.

Kristen Norton is working on the laser system and build-up cavity for the calcium MOT, also as part of her senior capstone project. She has already built the mount for the tapered amplifier that we will use to increase the power of a diode laser before frequency doubling it.

Sam Nhim is finishing up a paper from our summer research.

Matthew Bateman is transferring the working PI design from a test board to a printed circuit board using PCBExpress.