About the project

This repository contains Python code for analyzing data from a real-world quantum mechanics lab experiment. The experiment involved using laser pulses to excite Rubidium atoms in a vapor cell, aiming to uncover key features of the atomic structure.

Requirements

• JupyterLab
• Pandas
• NumPy
• Lmfit
• Matplotlib

How to use this project

The code in these files can be adapted and used as a reference for analyzing results of laser absorption spectroscopy experiments.

Any environment that can load a python kernel and run jupyter notebooks such as vs code, google collab or conda can be used.

In order to adapt the code to new measurements, a basic understanding on how to place, load and transform the data is required.

Contributors

The experiment was performed under the guidance of Dr. Eric Jones and Kristina Finelli.

Data collection and analysis performed by Zachary Kluger and Alin Airinei.

To detect the fine and hyperfine splitting of energy levels, we can use a spectrometer to measure the wavelength or frequency of electromagnetic radiation produced during transitions between energy levels.

However, due to the fine and hyperfine splitting of the energy levels, the emitted photon can have multiple wavelengths.

Using a spectrometer we can measure the intensity of the photons at each wavelength. The resulting spectrum will have peaks corresponding to each wavelength. First, the fine structure can be analyzed by locating and measuring the distance between peaks. Next, by applying a counter-propagating laser beam to reduce the absorption rate of the initial probe, the hyperfine structure will be revealed by the appearance of dips corresponding to transitions from the ground state to the hyperfine levels of the excited state.