Optical Components

All of the optical components are laid out on an optical breadboard which is about 3' x 3'. The two photos below show all of the different optical components which are available for you to plan with.

The following table describes each of the optical components shown above.

Component Qty Description
1 Linear polarizer for 780 nm light.
3 50/50 cube beamsplitter.  This beamsplitter passes 50% of light and reflects 50%, independent of polarization. Beamsplitters will have labeling of the form BS### on the top or no labeling.
2 Polarizing cube beamsplitter.  This beam splitter reflects vertically polarized light while passing horizontally polarized light. Polarizing beamsplitters will have labeling of the form PBS### on the top.
7 Mirrors. These are basic silvered mirrors with a high reflectivity at 780nm.
2 Natural Rb vapor cells. We have two vapor cells containing natural Rb.  Naturally occurring Rubidium contains a mixture of two isotopes 58Rb(72.2% abundance) and 87Rb(27.8% abundance).
3 Amplified photodiodes. These photodetectors produce a voltage which is proportional to the intensity of the light striking the diode.  This voltage can be recorded on a digital scope.

The signals from the photodiodes are displayed on a digital oscilloscope. Traces from the digital scope can be downloaded and saved to computer in a text format which is easy to read in Python.

If you are not certain what these different optical components are, and how they can be used…. Google them or look them up on website of the manufacturer, ThorLabs.