English

Femtosecond wavepacket interferometry using the rotational dynamics of a trapped cold molecular ion

Quantum Physics 2015-02-20 v1 Atomic Physics

Abstract

A Ramsey-type interferometer is suggested, employing a cold trapped ion and two time-delayed off-resonant femtosecond laser pulses. The laser light couples to the molecular polarization anisotropy, inducing rotational wavepacket dynamics. An interferogram is obtained from the delay dependent populations of the final field-free rotational states. Current experimental capabilities for cooling and preparation of the initial state are found to yield an interferogram visibility of more than 80\%. The interferograms can be used to determine the polarizability anisotropy with an accuracy of about ±2%\pm 2\%, respectively ±5%\pm 5\%, provided the uncertainty in the initial populations and measurement errors are confined to within the same limits.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1411.3849,
  title  = {Femtosecond wavepacket interferometry using the rotational dynamics of a trapped cold molecular ion},
  author = {J. Martin Berglund and Michael Drewsen and Christiane P. Koch},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1411.3849},
  year   = {2015}
}