Progress toward Coherent Control of Ultracold Collisions with Frequency-Chirped Laser Light

Frequency-chirped laser light as recently been shown to coherently control collisions and photoassoication. We are planning to use short (~ 3 ns), intense (> 100 mW/cm²), frequency-chirped (~1 GHz in 6ns) laser light to control excited-state collisions between Rb atoms in a MOT. We will discuss our progress towards this aim, including stabilization of our MOT and our computer control system.