News & Events

May 2011

Senior Hannah Waite, a double major in physics and music, describes her senior thesis project, the laser harp:

Summer 2010

Welcome to our new colleague: Dr. Anne Goodsell will be joining the physics department faculty during the summer of 2010.

Research and Background:

The transfer of energy between light and matter (from photons to
atoms) is not just fascinating and beautiful; it is useful.

The resonant interaction between light and individual atoms in a gas can make those atoms heat up, cool down, or come to a nearly-complete stop in midair.  I have been studying laser-cooling of atoms for the past decade, first during my undergraduate work at Bryn Mawr College (A.B. in physics, English) and later during my graduate and post-doctoral research at Harvard (Ph.D. 2010). I will continue this research in my experimental work at Middlebury.  Our efforts in 2010-2011 are focused on assembling the equipment for a laser-cooling system: the lasers themselves, the source of atoms, and the vacuum chamber, optics, and electronics for these experiments.  We plan to measure cold atoms that are influenced by external electric fields and also to investigate the forces that affect atoms or ions near solid surfaces.