Shaffer Research Group

Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics at the University of Oklahoma
 

The Shaffer group is pursuing methods for cooling and trapping molecules in order to study long range forces, molecular alignment, exotic molecular states, near threshold scattering dynamics, energy transfer and quantum control of bimolecular collisions. The group also does some work on photoelectron photoion coincidence imaging spectroscopy to study gas phase molecular dynamics. Recently, we have also become interested in Bose-Einstein condensation. All of these experiments are technically challenging and require narrow band width lasers, pulsed lasers, ultrahigh vacuum technology, pulsed beam techniques, high frequency electronics, numerical computation, computer modeling and novel time and position sensitive detectors.

Ultracold Molecules and Stark Slowing
We are currently working on methods to produce dense samples of ultracold molecules. The methods that we are examining include Stark slowing and photoassociation. These efforts are underway to study problems in chemical physics. Current experiments are focused toward studying 3 body recombination and photoassociative collisions in ultracold gases using angle and energy resolved recoil momentum distributions.
Cold Rydberg Gases and Ultracold Collisions
The second research interest of our group is cold collisions. Our research group has investigated collisons in cold Rydberg gases by studying line shapes and velocity distributions of atoms leaving a collision. These experiments are important to proposed schemes for quantum computing and for understanding the mechanisms that lead to the formation of ultracold plasmas. Our work towards studying 3 body recombination is closely connected with the study of cold Rydberg gases.
Intermolecular Energy Flow
Our third research interest is time-resolved dynamics of molecules using TRPEPICO imaging. The development of active molecular electronics requires an understanding of how energy flows to excite the different degrees of freedom of a molecule. Intramolecular energy flow is directly related to our understanding of chemical reaction dynamics. Relevant questions of interest to our group are how nonadiabatic transistions and vibrational energy transfer affect the formation or fission of a bond. Time-resolved photoelectron-photoion imaging spectroscopy has proven itself a useful technique to study these questions.
Bose-Einstein Condensation

Bose-Einstein condensed samples of dilute atomic gases have many interesting properties. Bose condensates behave collectively and exhibit unique properties associated with their high degree of coherence. Many body effects can be studied starting from the well known properties of the constitutent atoms and the condensate can be used to make sensitive interferometric measurements using the wave properties of the atoms.

 
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