Interactive simulators, spectroscopic references, lab calculators, and technique guides for atomic, molecular, and optical physics, curated from real lab experience in optical tweezers and ultracold atoms.
AMO work rarely begins with a page title. These paths collect the calculators, derivations, and practical notes around the thing you are actually trying to do.
Start with detuning, gradients, capture velocity, and trap-frequency intuition.
Map species to wavelengths, sources, AOMs, fibers, and nonlinear stages.
Balance photons, survival, camera noise, SNR, and detection fidelity.
Use release-recapture, TOF, and cooling-limit estimates without mixing conventions.
Compare Rb, Yb, and supporting atom data before committing to hardware assumptions.
Combine blockade, Doppler, scattering, phase noise, SPAM, and atom loss.
Explore labs by species, technique, topic, and research direction.
Follow a staged syllabus from first AMO papers to advanced research literature.
Map lab skills onto neutral atoms, ions, photonics, superconductors, and roadmaps.
The nav now follows the way AMO work actually happens: build the apparatus, measure what it does, cool and trap atoms, then connect the result to quantum computing and career decisions.
Comprehensive spectroscopic data for 15 laser-coolable atoms, alkali, alkaline-earth, and magnetic species. Doppler temperatures, linewidths, nuclear spins, hyperfine splittings, data sheet links, and leading US research groups organized by topic.
Practical instrumentation guide for ultracold-atom and optical-tweezer experiments. Covers Gaussian beam optics, AC Stark shift, fluorescence imaging, PDH locking, magnetic coil design, thermometry, and Doppler cooling.
Quantum defect theory for any alkali Rydberg state: effective quantum number, binding energy, orbital radius, and radiative lifetime. Interactive blockade radius calculator, find Rb for any species, state, and Rabi frequency.
Monte Carlo thermometry simulator for optical tweezer experiments. Measure atom temperature by simulating recapture probability vs. free-flight time, with dynamic polarizability calculations (D1 + D2), adjustable trap parameters, and fitted temperature output.
Quick-reference calculators for everyday AMO experiments: Gaussian beam optics, mW ↔ dBm power conversion, recoil energy, Doppler shift, Zeeman shift, de Broglie wavelength, saturation intensity, trap frequency, and cavity FSR/finesse.
Interactive Doppler and Sisyphus cooling visualizer for trapped atoms. Explore force-versus-velocity curves, damping, momentum diffusion, polarization-gradient cooling, and the cooling trajectory in phase space.
Tutorial on the three main frequency stabilization techniques used in AMO: saturated-absorption spectroscopy (SAS), beat-note (offset) locking with PLL, and Pound-Drever-Hall (PDH) cavity locking. Atom database, spacer materials, Doppler FWHM calculator.
Visualize and build Zernike wavefront modes up to radial order n = 6 (OSA/ANSI). Interactive 2D heatmaps and arbitrary wavefront superposition for SLM phase engineering, Laguerre-Gaussian beam generation, orbital angular momentum (OAM), and PSF shaping.
Interactive Stokes polarimetry simulator, visualize any polarization state on the Poincaré sphere, simulate the rotating-QWP measurement (Schaefer 2007), extract Stokes parameters via Fourier analysis, and compare HWP vs QWP methods. Includes E-field animation, Mueller matrices, and Jones calculus reference.
Single-atom fluorescence detection calculator for optical tweezer experiments, photon scattering rate on D2 lines, collection efficiency via NA and camera QE, full noise budget (shot noise, background, dark counts, read noise), SNR vs exposure time chart, and detection fidelity estimate for EMCCD or sCMOS cameras.
Rydberg two-qubit gate error budget, quantify contributions from spontaneous emission, Doppler dephasing, laser phase noise, finite blockade leakage, SPAM, atom loss, magnetic field noise, and Rabi inhomogeneity. Live bar chart of error fractions, total fidelity estimate, and comparison to state-of-the-art (Evered 2023: 99.5%).
Magneto-optical trap and magnetic trap calculator, damping coefficient, spring constant, MOT trap frequency and capture velocity from laser parameters; Ioffe-Pritchard trap frequencies (ω_r, ω_z), trap depth, and evaporation parameter η from coil field parameters. Includes V(r) trap profile chart and Majorana loss rate estimate.
Time-of-flight temperature calculator for ultracold atom experiments, ballistic cloud expansion σ²(t) = σ₀² + (k_BT/m)t², linear fit tool to extract T from multiple (t, σ) data points, de Broglie wavelength, phase-space density, and comparison to Doppler limits and single-recoil energy scales. Supports Rb, Cs, Li, Na, K.
Compute single-photon vacuum Rabi coupling g₀, cavity decay rate κ, single-atom cooperativity C, and Purcell factor for any atom in an optical resonator. Identify the coupling regime (strong / Purcell / weak) and see reference systems from Kimble, Vuletic, and Thompson groups.
Complete laser system diagram for any atom species — every required wavelength, source type (diode, SHG, SFG), power, AOM configuration, fiber delivery, and NLO stage. Visual beam-path block diagram with wavelength-coded color and practical sourcing notes for Rb, Cs, Li, Na, K, Sr, Yb, and Dy.
From finding the right research group to reading the foundational papers and understanding the industry landscape — resources curated for every stage of an AMO career.
Interactive world map of 60+ leading AMO research groups — click any marker to see the PI, institution, atom species, research focus, and recent flagship paper. Filter by topic: Rydberg, quantum simulation, optical clocks, BEC, polar molecules, cavity QED, dipolar gases, and ion traps.
53 foundational papers organized by career stage: undergrad, first-year grad, advanced grad, and postdoc. Each entry includes authors, journal, year, a one-sentence explanation of why it matters, and a DOI link. Keystone, review, experimental, and theory papers clearly tagged.
Researcher's guide to quantum computing hardware, DiVincenzo criteria, NISQ era context, and a detailed platform comparison: superconducting qubits, ion traps, photonics, neutral atoms, and topological qubits. Company landscape (IBM, IonQ, Pasqal, QuEra, Google), fidelity metrics, and a neutral-atom spotlight with Rydberg gate benchmarks.
Interactive visualizations of core quantum mechanics, from single qubits on the Bloch sphere to Rydberg blockade and decoherence. No prior quantum background required.
Pick the workflow closest to your actual problem. Each path gives a sensible order through the site.
Saumitra Phatak is a Physics PhD student at Purdue University, working in the Hood Lab on ultracold atoms and quantum computing using optical tweezers. He has trapped and cooled single lithium and cesium atoms to within microkelvin of absolute zero.
AMO Toolkit grew out of the tools, references, and calculators that proved most useful during his PhD, and from a desire to make AMO physics more accessible to students joining the field.
Outside the lab, he writes poetry in Hindi, Marathi, and English at Siyahi (सियाही), and personal essays about doing a PhD abroad at Curious Writings.
Trapped and cooled single ⁶Li and ¹³³Cs atoms in optical tweezers at Purdue's Hood Lab, working toward Li-Cs molecule formation.
Working toward the first Li-Cs ground-state molecules in optical tweezers at Purdue, combining single-atom control with Feshbach resonance association.
Research on Rydberg-mediated entanglement and two-qubit gates using ultracold atoms in reconfigurable tweezer arrays.
Sub-Doppler sideband cooling of single atoms to near-zero motional quantum number, the physics behind the Cooling Simulator and Release-Recapture tools.