Experimental Apparatus to Study the Spinor Dynamics of a Bose Thermal Gas*

We present our progress towards the construction of a cold atom apparatus to study the spinor dynamics of a Bose thermal gas. We have designed, constructed, and tested low-cost, external-cavity diode lasers (ECDLs) to operate below the rubidium D2 transition at 780 nm for use in an undergraduate-only research laboratory. Using these ECDLs, we performed saturated absorption spectroscopy (SAS) to measure and lock to the transition frequencies of 85 Rb and 87 Rb using a sub-Doppler dichroic atomic vapor laser lock (DAVLL). We injection lock a free-running diode laser (FRDL) to with seed light from the trap ECDL. The locking electronics, frequency stabilization, and vacuum chamber design will be discussed.