Change input direction
Change mirror alignment
change input focus
Cavity set
A great choice as the first quantum LEGO set. Looks amazing as a standalone desk toy, and also fun to fiddle around with. The design will require further iterations. Mostly to make the assembling process easier, and also to have a uniform design language that future products can conform to.
Compact ECDL set
A laser diode housing with built in grating mount and a simple current controller. Will be able to output single mode, coarsely tunable laser light. While rudimentary and unstable due to uncontrolled temperature and vibrations, It’s output will be proper single frequency light, with very long coherent length.
On it’s own, it can demonstrate how external cavity diode lasers work, or how lasers in general works. A game can be played: try to improve the laser performance by tuning the grating orientation. When feedback from the grating is improved, the lasing threshold will be lowered, producing a flash of bright light.
A coherent light source will be one of the most important building block for most of the future experiments.
Interplay between the ECDL set and the cavity set
Compare with the built in laser module, the light from a single mode ECDL will have much longer coherence length. Thus when used as input light into the cavity, in a diverging configuration where the laser beam traveling back and forth in the cavity will have good overlap, there will be visible interference on the cavity mirrors. Also the ECDL set will allow for the ability swap diode of different color and power.
The Image and schematic come from our paper on the cavity. It will be published on Applied Optics, and is already on arXiv.
We believe the combination of the two sets described here will be a foundation, that can be used in many future experiments, making them look more striking by increase the laser power close to 100 times.
Future set ideas
AMO physics experiment is a treasure trove of fun and striking toy set ideas, many concepts like interference, coherent absorption, spontaneous emission, non-linear optics, photon cycling, laser cooling and slowing can be explored with affordable experiments and demonstrations. With good design, many will have multitudes of different innovative interplays between different sets. By making them standardized and curated, these sets will be accessible to the general audience.
While some standardizations already exists in the research grade instruments and components. There’s a huge room for improvement because they still require expertise and even seasoned researchers have to dig around to find tools and components all the time.