| Experimental and theoretical progress has been made toward the production and manipulation of novel atomic and molecular states. The design, construction and characterization of a driver for an acousto--optic modulator is presented, which achieves a maximum diffraction efficiency of 54% at 200 MHz, using a commercial modulator. A novel design is presented for a highly sensitive optical spectrum analyzer for displaying laser mode structure in real time. Utilizing programmable microcontrollers to read data from a CMOS image sensor illuminated by the diffraction pattern from a Fabry--Perot interferometer, this device can operate with beam powers as low as 3.3 muW, at a fraction of the cost of equivalent products. Computational results are presented analyzing the behaviour of a model quantum system in the vicinity of an avoided crossing. The results are compared with calculations based on the Landau--Zener formula, with discussion of its limitations. Further computational work is focused on simulating expected conditions in the implementation of a technique for coherent control quantum states atomic and molecular beams. The work presented provides tools to further the aim of producing large, mono--energetic populations of heavy Rydberg systems. |
