Research directions / Objectives

1.       Development of cavity-enhanced polarimetry (for improvement of sensitivity and time resolution).
2.       Development of cavity-enhanced ellipsometry (for improvement of sensitivity and time resolution).
3.       Measurement of atomic parity-nonconservation in Iodine, Xenon, and Mercury.
4.       Production of spin-polarized atoms and molecules. 

HIGHLIGHTS

 

•  European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant (2008-2013), “Time-resolved Ring-Cavity-Enhanced Polarization Spectroscopy (TRICEPS)”.
•  J. Chem. Phys. 132, 224310 (on photofragment polarization from polyatomic molecules) highlighted as one of 80 papers for the 80th anniversary of JCP: http://imageserve.chem.unc.edu/resources/pdf_files/home_page/JCP_80th_Anniversary.pdf Proposal for cavity-enhanced parity-nonconserving (PNC) optical rotation in Hg, Xe, and I [Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 210801 (2012), Editor Suggestion]. [1]

· Demonstration of new cavity-enhanced polarimetry techniques:

       a) Cavity Ring-Down Ellipsometry (CRDE) [J. Chem. Phys. 31, 121101 (2009)].

       b) Evanescent-Wave Cavity Ring-Down Ellipsometry (EW-CRDE) [US patent pending].

       c) Chiral-Cavity Ring-Down (CCRD) [Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 210801 (2012), patent pending].

· First measurement of the complete three-dimensional steric effect in a bimolecular chemical reaction (dependence of reactivity on approach geometry) [F. Wang, K. Liu, T.P. Rakitzis, Nature Chemistry 4, 636 (2012)].

· Proposal and demonstration for the pulsed-laser production of spin-polarized atoms and molecules by the time-dependent transfer of polarization from molecular rotational polarization via the hyperfine interaction [T.P. Rakitzis,Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 83005 (2005)].

· First observation of the photofragment recoil deflection angle, from the photodissociation of OCS molecules three-dimensionally “fixed-in-space” [Rakitzis et al., Science  303, 1852 (2004)].

•  Production of spin-polarized hydrogen atoms from pulsed molecular photodissociation at high density [Rakitzis et al., Science  300, 1936 (2003)], and pulsed laser-detection.

 

Research Topics