Manipulation of cold atom clouds: gravitational effects & magnetic media

College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA.

Thursday 23^rd February 2006, 3.30AM, Seminar Room AR103, Graduate Research Centre.

We are carrying out experiments to diffract cold atoms from a periodic potential produced from a sample of magnetic recording media. In preparation, we have calculated the evolution of the longitudinal momentum distribution of an initial thermal cloud of atoms under the influence of gravity and its effect on the subsequent scattering of atoms from a magnetic sample. The resolvability of adjacent diffraction orders is found to depend on the potential energy change, but the form of the dependence varies with the experimental arrangements. We will also present measurements of the properties of Zip disks which we are using as a magnetic diffraction grating sample and give a brief progress report on our experiments.

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