Teaching
Lectures and courses by members of the lab.
Lecturer in the spotlight
UvA News: Lecturer in the spotlight: Florian Schreck
Introduction to quantum mechanics, part 3
This lecture is aligned with Griffiths' 2nd edition chapters 5 to 7 and taught in the 2nd year of the bachelor during 14 hours.
- Full lecture as PowerPoint presentation: Quantum mechanics lecture FS.pptx (36MB).
- Full lecture as pdf: Quantum mechanics lecture FS.pdf (17MB).
Bose-Einstein condensation
In this lecture, I explain how a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of ultracold atoms is created in the lab. During the first three lectures basic atom-light interaction properties are derived. Lectures 4 to 5 explain laser cooling and trapping. Lecture 6 introduces evaporative cooling and Bose-Einstein condensation. In lecture 7 the experimental characterization of some BEC properties are explained. Finally I give an overview of some of our current research projects.
This lecture was taught in autumn 2014 to 2023 in the physics master's programme of the University of Amsterdam. It was accompanied by a lecture on the theory of BEC by Gora Shlyapnikov.
- Full lecture as PowerPoint presentation: BEC_Lecture_UvA_FS_2021.pptx (111MB).
- Full lecture with notes as pdf: BEC_Lecture_UvA_FS_2021_with_notes.pdf (34MB).
- Full lecture as pdf: BEC_Lecture_UvA_FS_2021.pdf (40MB).
Video recordings:
- Lecture #1a, introduction
- Lecture #1b, lab tour
- Lecture #2
- Lecture #3a
- Lecture #3b
- Lecture #4
- Lecture #5
- Lecture #6
- Lecture #7
- Lecture #8
- Mathematica demonstration and figures: BEC_Lecture_UvA_FS_2015.nb (2MB), Rapid_adiabatic_passage.nb (0.6MB).
- LaTeX source of equations: BEC_Lecture_UvA_FS_2014.zip (15kB).
- Detailed calculations for lecture 3 & 4 (pdf).
Contents
- Lecture 1
- Ultracold quantum gases: What? Why? How?
- Labtour
- Lecture 2
- Atom-laser interaction
- Bloch sphere
- Lecture 3
- Dressed state picture
- Optical Bloch equations
- Detecting an ultracold gas
- Lecture 4
- Light forces
- Molasses cooling
- Sisyphus cooling
- Lecture 5
- Atomic beam oven
- Zeeman slower
- Magneto-optical trap
- Technology for laser cooling
- Lecture 6
- Optical dipole trap
- Magnetic trap
- Trap technology
- Evaporative cooling
- Characterizing a BEC
- Lecture 7
- Characterizing a BEC
- Our research: Laser cooling to BEC; Towards RbSr molecules
Quantum simulation
In this lecture, I explain how ultracold quantum gases can be used to study quantum physics in the spirit of quantum simulation. It was taught in spring 2015 in the physics master's programme of the University of Amsterdam. It was accompanied by a lecture on the theory of Fermi quantum gases by Gora Shlyapnikov.
To obtain a download link to the >600 slides PowerPoint presentation used during this lecture simply write a short email to schreck at strontiumBEC.com.
Contents
- Introduction: Quantum simulation
- Part 1: Simulation of crystalline solids
- Lattices: dispersion relation, Brillouin zone, Bloch states, Wannier states, Bloch oscillations, experimental realization
- Derivation of Hubbard Hamiltonian, discussion of approximations
- Superfluid to Mott-Insulator phase transition: phase diagram obtained by Gutzwiller Ansatz
- Experimental observation: momentum distributions, measurement of gap, precise comparison with numerical solution
- Observation of Mott shells by absorption imaging
- Quantum gas microscopy: observation of superfluid to Mott-insulator phase transition
- Part 2: Magnetism
- Origin of magnetism in solid state, types of exchange interaction
- Observation of super-exchange interaction
- Quantum dynamics of spin impurity observed with quantum gas microscope
- Quantum simulation of antiferromagnetic spin chains
- Changing the tunnel matrix element by shaking
- Quantum simulation of frustrated classical magnetism in triangular optical lattice
- Part 3: Artificial gauge fields
- Artificial gauge fields by rotation, detection of vortices
- The quantum Hall effect
- Artificial gauge fields and Berry phase
- BEC in a uniform light-induced vector potential
- Synthetic magnetic fields for ultracold neutral atoms
- Optical lattice with magnetic flux
- The Harper-Hofstadter Hamiltonian and the Hofstadter butterfly
- Realizing the Harper-Hofstadter Hamiltonian
- Spin-orbit coupling
- Part 4: Fermi gases
- Creation and detection
- Interaction tuning: Feshbach resonances
- BEC-BCS crossover: what is it? Measuring the pairing gap
- The unitary Fermi gas: equation of state, second sound
- Polarons
Atom lasers
FOMO summer school 2016 lecture on atom lasers.
- PowerPoint presentation: 20160908_Arcachon_FOMO_School_atom_lasers_FS.pptx (59MB).
- PDF: 20160908_Arcachon_FOMO_School_atom_lasers_FS.pdf (7MB).