Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 16, 2026

09:38
Characterizing Far-infrared Laser Emissions and the Measurement of Their Frequencies
Published on: December 18, 2015
Atomic laser-beam finder
Kirsten Viering1, David Medellin, Jianyong Mo
1Center for Nonlinear Dynamics and Department of Physics, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA.
Optics Express
|November 29, 2012
Abstract:
We report on an experimental method to align a laser beam to a cloud of atoms trapped in a magneto-optical trap (MOT). We show how balanced lock-in detection leads to a very sensitive method to align the laser beam to the atoms in the plane perpendicular to the propagation direction. This provides a very reliable and fast way of aligning laser beams to atoms trapped in a MOT.

