Label-free optical detection of bioelectric potentials using electrochromic thin films.

Understanding how a network of interconnected neurons receives, stores, and processes information in the human brain is one of the outstanding scientific challenges of our time. The ability to reliably detect neuroelectric activities is essential to addressing this challenge. Optical recording using voltage-sensitive fluorescent probes has provided unprecedented flexibility for choosing regions of interest in recording neuronal activities.

Recoil-Sensitive Lithium Interferometer without a Subrecoil Sample.

We report simultaneous conjugate Ramsey-Bordé interferometers with a sample of low-mass (lithium-7) atoms at 50 times the recoil temperature. We optically pump the atoms to a magnetically insensitive state using the 2S_{1/2}-2P_{1/2} line. Fast stimulated Raman beam splitters address a broad velocity class and unavoidably drive two conjugate interferometers that overlap spatially.