Related papers: Optical pumping and vibrational cooling of molecul…
Some of us have recently reported in Science 321 232 (2008) vibrational cooling of translationally cold Cs_2 molecules into the lowest vibrational level v=0 of the singlet X 1Sigma_g ground electronic state. Starting from a sample of cold…
We have recently demonstrated that optical pumping methods combined with photoassociation of ultra-cold atoms can produce ultra-cold and dense samples of molecules in their absolute rovibronic ground state. More generally, both the external…
We demonstrate rotational and vibrational cooling of cesium dimers by optical pumping techniques. We use two laser sources exciting all the populated rovibrational states, except a target state that thus behaves like a dark state where…
We consider the formation of cold ground-state polar molecules in a low vibrational level by laser fields. Starting from a pair of cold colliding atoms of dissimilar species, we propose a strategy consisting of three steps. In the first…
Ultracold LiCs molecules in the absolute ground state X$^1\Sigma^+$, v"=0, J"=0 are formed via a single photo-association step starting from laser-cooled atoms. The selective production of v"=0, J"=2 molecules with a 50-fold higher rate is…
We propose an improved photoassociation scheme to produce ultracold molecules in their vibronic ground state for the generic case where non-adiabatic effects facilitating transfer to deeply bound levels are absent. Formation of molecules is…
Laser cooling of molecules employing broadband optical pumping involves a timescale separation between laser excitation and spontaneous emission. Here, we optimize the optical pumping step using shaped laser pulses. We derive two…
Molecular laser cooling and trapping requires addressing all spontaneous decays to excited vibrational states that occur at the $\gtrsim 10^{-4} - 10^{-5}$ level, which is accomplished by driving repumping transitions out of these states.…
We demonstrate the conversion of cold Cs_{2} molecules initially distributed over several vibrational levels of the lowest triplet state a^{3}\Sigma_{u}^{+} into the singlet ground state X^{1}\Sigma_{g}^{+}. This conversion is realized by a…
We consider the use of pulse-shaped broadband femtosecond lasers to optically cool rotational and vibrational degrees of freedom of molecules. Since this approach relies on cooling rotational and vibrational quanta by exciting an electronic…
Laser cycling of resonances can remove entropy from a system via spontaneously emitted photons, with electronic resonances providing the fastest cooling timescales because of their rapid relaxation rates. Although atoms are routinely laser…
Chemical reactions can be surprisingly efficient at ultracold temperatures ( < 1mK) due to the wave nature of atoms and molecules. The study of reactions in the ultracold regime is a new research frontier enabled by cooling and trapping…
Ultracold molecular gases are promising as an avenue to rich many-body physics, quantum chemistry, quantum information, and precision measurements. This richness, which flows from the complex internal structure of molecules, makes the…
We use two-laser optical pumping on a continuous atomic fountain in order to prepare cold cesium atoms in the same quantum ground state. A first laser excites the F=4 ground state to pump the atoms toward F=3 while a second pi-polarized…
The paper investigates cold molecules formation in the photoassociation of two cold atoms by a strong laser pulse applied at short interatomic distances, which lead to a molecular dynamics taking place in the light-induced (adiabatic)…
We present an opto-electrical cooling scheme for polar molecules based on a Sisyphus-type cooling cycle in suitably tailored electric trapping fields. Dissipation is provided by spontaneous vibrational decay in a closed level scheme found…
Analogous to the extension of laser cooling techniques from two-level to three-level atoms, Doppler cooling of molecules with an intermediate electronic state is considered. In particular, we use a rate-equation approach to simulate cooling…
We investigate the rovibrational population redistribution of polar molecules in the electronic ground state induced by spontaneous emission and blackbody radiation. As a model system we use optically trapped LiCs molecules formed by…
We have produced ultracold, polar RbCs* molecules via photoassociation in a laser-cooled mixture of Rb and Cs atoms. Using a model of the RbCs* molecular interaction which reproduces the observed rovibrational structure, we infer decay…
We demonstrate the production of ultracold polar RbCs molecules in their vibronic ground state, via photoassociation of laser-cooled atoms followed by a laser-stimulated state transfer process. The resulting sample of $X ^1\Sigma^+ (v=0)$…