Modern Physics Experiments for Undergraduates with Cooled Charge-Coupled Device Array Detectors

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The Junior Advanced Laboratory at Princeton University is the core experimental course for physics majors. A major overhaul currently underway, seeks to replace some old experiments with new ones, and to upgrade the instrumentation in the rest. A significant fraction of the new experiments relate to techniques of modern optics or the detection of photons. They have acquired two charge coupled device (CCD) cameras that are greatly facilitating the implementation of these experiments. (Some of these would not be possible without the CCD.) In three of these experiments, the CCD is being used with a spectrometer and a home-built pulsed nitrogen laser which pumps a dye laser. An introduction to the important technique of hole-burning transient spectroscopy is being offered in Experiment 1. In Experiment 2, students are being introduced to modern non-linear optics by performing four-wave phase conjugation in sodium vapor. The CCD detector greatly facilitates tuning of the pump lasers to the sodium transition lines. The third optics experiment demonstrates the phenomenon of Raman scattering in water. The capability of simultaneously capturing the full Raman spectrum in a CCD array makes this experiment feasible in an undergraduate lab. Resonance- enhanced Raman scattering will also be used to study dilute concentrations of hemoglobin in solution. Experiment 4 uses a CCD camera to record the orbits of the moons of Jupiter, and to measure their periods and orbit radii. The last experiment demonstrates the interference of a single photon with itself in generating the classic Young interference pattern. Although photographic film is competitive with the CCD detector, the latter is much more versatile and better suited for an instructional laboratory setting.