Student response to these courses has been excellent, resulting in their being two of our most heavily subscribed courses at the senior level. The optics and atomic physics of lasers is discussed in Laser Physics. Lab exercises involve coherence properties, Gaussian optics, cavity stability, holography, and Fabry-Perot's. Spectroscopy of Atoms and Molecules is mainly a laboratory course.
Students first use a prism spectrometer, to view atomic, molecular, and blackbody sources.
More advanced techniques are used to obtain progressively higher resolution to observe Zeeman splittings, fine structure, and isotope shifts for example. Recent experiments include saturation spectroscopy, opto-galvanic studies. Lab facilities are also used for demonstration purposes in lower level classes, and for a variety of senior projects. If you would like lab manuals, feel free to e-mail us. While we are only in the process of writing up our new experiments for publication in refereed journals, we see the results of the program in the students that have participated.