Laser Cooling and Guiding of Atoms in Optical Waveguides
This grant explores trapping and manipulating cold atoms using lasers and optical waveguides for applications like sensing and studying atom behavior in real-time.
This grant is no longer accepting proposals
NRC Research Associateship Programs has archived this opportunity.
Funder: NRC Research Associateship Programs
Due Dates: May 1, 2025 | August 1, 2025 | November 1, 2025 | February 1, 2026
Funding Amounts: $99,200 stipend plus $3,000 travel allowance; typical tenure 2-3 years.
Summary: Postdoctoral fellowship supporting research on laser cooling and guiding of cold atoms in optical waveguides at the Naval Research Laboratory.
Key Information: Open to U.S. citizens and permanent residents with a Ph.D. earned within the last 5 years; relocation and health insurance benefits included.
Description
This fellowship opportunity supports research focused on the manipulation and guiding of cold atoms confined in optical potentials. The research primarily involves two approaches:
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Hollow-core optical fiber guiding: Investigating high flux cold-atom transport, enhanced nonlinear optical effects in photonic crystal fiber guides, magnetometry applications, and cooling processes in axially tailored optical fibers.
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Free-space (holographic) optical guiding: Using blue- and red-detuned laser fields to confine atoms in dynamically alterable arbitrary optical potentials. This includes recent studies on interactions of atoms with cylindrical vector beams that have spatially varying polarization profiles (e.g., radially or azimuthally polarized beams).
The research aims to advance understanding of cold atom behavior and develop applications in sensing and nonlinear optics.
