EQuAL Seminar: Jared Padgett

"Ultracold Potassium Gases in Optical Tweezers"

Neutral atoms are a powerful platform for the study of a wide variety of quantum phenomena, including the quantum emulation of many-body systems using ultracold gases, precision measurement through matter wave interferometry, and recently, quantum information science using individual neutral atoms in optical tweezers. We present progress on an apparatus capable of trapping several individually controlled Bose-Einstein condensates of neutral potassium atoms in optical tweezers. We aim to study quantum interactive dynamics – systems in which entanglement growth competes with partially projective measurements to govern the evolution of the system. This talk emphasizes a pedagogical discussion of cold atom trapping and cooling techniques, and considerations for building and running an ultracold atom machine.