RUI: Experiments on Trapped Atoms and Dielectric-Barrier Discharges

本次锐创活动聚焦两个项目。第一个项目使用激光冷却和捕获系统来测量磁光捕获的氪和氩的亚稳态寿命，使用光子计数和亚稳态猝灭的方法来确定单原子的自发衰减率到几个百分点。第二个项目建立在早期对新型介质阻挡放电(DBD)系统中一维时空图案的发现和表征的基础上，DBD是一种高电压、交流驱动的气体放电，通常工作在大气压范围内，产生活性化学物质和强烈的准分子荧光。这种图案形成在非线性动力学领域中是基本感兴趣的，并且可能在DBD应用中的各种诊断和/或控制方案中具有前景。

This RUI activity focuses on two projects. The first project uses a laser-cooling and trapping system for the measurement of metastable lifetimes in magneto-optically trapped krypton and argon, using a method of photon counting and metastable-state quenching to determine the single-atom spontaneous decay rate to a few percent. The second project builds on an earlier discovery and characterization of one-dimensional spatiotemporal patterns in a novel dielectric-barrier discharge (DBD) system, a class of high-voltage, ac-driven gaseous discharges that typically operate in the atmospheric pressure range and produce reactive chemical species and intense excimer fluorescence. This pattern formation is of basic interest in the field of non-linear dynamics and may hold promise in various diagnostic and/or control schemes in DBD applications.