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MIT Atomic Physics

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Part I Course Notes (8.421)

This material is from MIT 8.421 Atomic Physics I and is only in DRAFT form at the present. You are welcome to edit to correct mistakes and add content.

• 1. Resonances
• 2. Atoms
• 3. Fine Structure and Lamb Shift
• 4. Effects of the Nucleus on Atomic Structure
• 5. Atoms in Magnetic Fields
• 6. Atoms in electric fields
• 7. Interaction of an atom with an electromagnetic field
• 8. Resonance Line Shapes
• 9. Two-Photon Excitation
• 10. Coherence

Old MIT 8.421 Course Notes (pre-2008) ; Bibliographic references (needs to be moved into individual chapters)

Part II Course Notes (8.422)

Prof. Dave Pritchard demonstrating classical squeezing with a parametrically driven pendulum oscillator see video

This material is from MIT 8.422 Atomic Physics II and is only in DRAFT form at the present. This material will be actively edited around when coresponding subjects are discussed in class.

• 1: Introduction to Atomic Physics
• 2: Quantum light: states and dynamics
• 3: Optical Bloch equations
• 4: Photon-atom interactions
• 5: Light forces
• 6: Quantum gases
• 7: Ion traps and quantum information

Sample Topics

<random count=4> Interferometer shot noise limit Non-classical states of light Squeezed light interferometry Interferometer Heisenberg limit Introduction to Atomic Physics Photons and statistics Single photons Entangled Photons Interferometry and metrology Derivation of the optical Bloch equations Steady state solutions of the optical Bloch equations Unraveling quantum open system dynamics Laser cooling of trapped ions Quantum computation and trapped ions Quantum control and trapped ions Optical Molasses Beam Slowing Magneto-Optical Traps Van der Waals interaction Casimir interaction Resonant scattering The operator sum representation of open quantum system dynamics </random>

Useful Resources

• MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms
• JILA Center for Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics
• Caltech quantum optics wiki

• MIT Quantum Information Science wiki

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