A simple extended-cavity diode laser using a precision mirror mount.

We have developed an extended-cavity diode laser (ECDL) with a simple design by using a commercial precision mirror mount with minor modifications. Our design allows tuning of the external cavity configuration by tweaking the volume holographic grating without troublesome changes in the beam path of the laser output. The mode-hop-free tuning range of the presented ECDL is about 8 GHz with a linewidth of 475 kHz.

Receptor for Advanced Glycation End Products (RAGE) is Expressed Predominantly in Medium Spiny Neurons of tgHD Rat Striatum.

Receptor for advanced glycation end products (RAGE) is a multi-ligand receptor involved in the pathology of several progressive neurodegenerative disorders including Huntington's disease (HD). We previously showed that the expression of RAGE and its colocalization with ligands were increased in the striatum of HD patients, increasing with grade severity, and that the pattern of RAGE expression coincided with the medio-lateral pattern of neurodegeneration. However, the exact role of RAGE in HD remains elusive.

Microwave control of atomic motion in optical lattices.

We control the quantum mechanical motion of neutral atoms in an optical lattice by driving microwave transitions between spin states whose trapping potentials are spatially offset. Control of this offset with nanometer precision allows for adjustment of the coupling strength between different motional states, analogous to an adjustable effective Lamb-Dicke factor. This is used both for efficient one-dimensional sideband cooling of individual atoms to a vibrational ground state population of 97% and to drive coherent Rabi oscillation between arbitrary pairs of vibrational states.

Quantum walk in position space with single optically trapped atoms.

The quantum walk is the quantum analog of the well-known random walk, which forms the basis for models and applications in many realms of science. Its properties are markedly different from the classical counterpart and might lead to extensive applications in quantum information science. In our experiment, we implemented a quantum walk on the line with single neutral atoms by deterministically delocalizing them over the sites of a one-dimensional spin-dependent optical lattice.