Ashby Hilton - Generating ultra-strong light-atom interaction in hollow-core photonic crystal fibre

The goal of my PhD was to develop an apparatus that realises the laser-cooling, trapping, and loading of rubidium atoms into a kagome-lattice hollow-core fibre.

The tight transverse confinement of light provided by fibre guarantees overlap between the trapped atomic sample and guided optical modes over an arbitrarily long distance.

Laser cooling improves the effective atom number of the sample by increasing the fraction that participate in interaction, and significantly improves the coherent interaction time by reducing the spatial decoherence rate of the ensemble.

The resulting platform is capable of achieving the ultra-high optical depths required for exciting quantum-optics applications such as long-lived coherent optical pulse storage.

I will talk about the design and development of this system, the results achieved, and directions forward for the project