In the presence of proper boundary conditions, quantum fluctuations have observable consequences in the macroscopic world. In this thesis, two such manifestations are studied, namely the Casimir force acting between two uncharged conducting surfaces and the modification of the spontaneous emission rate of fermionic atoms from Pauli blocking. We first discuss the results from the electrostatic calibrations in the attempt to measure the Casimir force in the cylinder-plane geometry. Systematic effects previously unidentified such as the distance-dependence of the minimizing potential and the significant deviation of the scaling exponent from the expected theoretical value have been observed. These findings have serious implications for the data analysis procedures and could lead to inaccurate determination of important parameters. Possible causes of these anomalies are also discussed. We then studied ways to cool fermions down to lower temperatures which are required to explore many predicted quantum phenomena. For dual-species sympathetic cooling, we show that changing the dimensionality of the trap could lead to a better heat capacity matching and lower temperatures for fermions. We have also proposed a prospective new cooling mechanism for single-species traps. This mechanism takes advantage of a complementary effect to the Purcell effect which leads to the suppression of the spontaneous emission and consequently a lower cooling limit. Thermalization studies of a test particle coupled to different heat baths are also presented, as well as the current status of our laser cooling apparatus.
展开▼
