Heavy Rydberg Photo-dissociation Cross-section Calculations and Experimental Progress Towards Cold Collisions in Lithium

摘要

This thesis is divided into two parts, each of which supports constructingand using a lithium magneto-optical trap for cold collision studies: Part I: One outgoing channel of interest from cold collisions is theproduction of ion pairs. We describe an effective method for calculatingbound-to-continuum cross-sections for charged binary systems by examiningtransitions to states above the binding energy that become bound when thesystem is placed within an infinite spherical well. This approach is verifiedfor ionization of a hydrogen atom, and is then applied to the heavy Rydbergsystem Li+...I-. Part II: A wavemeter previously built in the lab is redesigned for increasedreliability and ease of use by replacing the optical hardware with a rockersystem, which can be aligned in mere minutes rather than half a day as waspreviously the case. The new wavemeter has been tested through saturatedabsorption spectroscopy of lithium.