Related papers: Optical pumping and vibrational cooling of molecul…

We propose a process to convert ultracold metastable Cs$_2$ molecules in their lowest triplet state into (singlet) ground state molecules in their lowest vibrational levels. Molecules are first pumped into an excited triplet state, and the…

Chemical reactions typically proceed via stochastic encounters between reactants. Going beyond this paradigm, we combine exactly two atoms into a single, controlled reaction. The experimental apparatus traps two individual laser-cooled…

A near-minimal instance of optical cooling is experimentally presented wherein the internal-state entropy of a single atom is reduced more than twofold by illuminating it with broadband, incoherent light. Since the rate of optical pumping…

Recently, laser cooling methods have been extended from atoms to molecules. The complex rotational and vibrational energy level structure of molecules makes laser cooling difficult, but these difficulties have been overcome and molecules…

In this work we investigate the theory for three different uni-directional population transfer schemes in trapped multilevel systems which can be utilized to cool molecular ions. The approach we use exploits the laser-induced coupling…

We present a method to design a finite decay rate for excited rotational states in polar molecules. The setup is based on a hybrid system of polar molecules with atoms driven into a Rydberg state. The atoms and molecules are coupled via the…

Cavity cooling of an atom works best on a cyclic optical transition in the strong coupling regime near resonance, where small cavity photon numbers suffice for trapping and cooling. Due to the absence of closed transitions a straightforward…

We propose a method to reconstruct the vibrational quantum state of molecules excited by a general excitation laser pulse. Unlike existing methods, we do not require the molecules before excitation to be in a pure state, allowing us to…

Laser cooling of large, complex molecules is a long-standing goal, instrumental for enabling new quantum technology and precision measurements. A primary consideration for the feasibility of laser cooling, which determines the efficiency…

While many-particle entanglement can be found in natural solids and strongly interacting atomic and molecular gases, generating highly entangled states between weakly interacting particles in a controlled and scalable way presents a…

Optical Feshbach resonances [Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 193001 (2005)] and pump-dump photoassociation with short laser pulses [Phys. Rev. A 73, 033408 (2006)] have been proposed as means to coherently form stable ultracold alkali dimer molecules.…

We present a new method for the generation of rotationally and vibrationally state-selected, translationally cold molecular ions in ion traps. Our technique is based on the state-selective threshold photoionization of neutral molecules…

For experiments that require a quantum system to be in the ultra-cold regime, laser cooling is an essential tool. While techniques for laser cooling ions and neutral atoms have been refined and temperatures below the Doppler limit have been…

We propose a cavity based laser cooling and trapping scheme, providing tight confinement and cooling to very low temperatures, without degradation at high particle densities. A bidirectionally pumped ring cavity builds up a resonantly…

Cooling the rotation and the vibration of molecules by broadband light sources was possible for trapped molecular ions or ultracold molecules. Because of a low power spectral density, the cooling timescale has never fell below than a few…

An increasingly large variety of molecular species are being cooled down to low energies in recent years, and innovative ideas and powerful techniques continue to emerge to gain ever more precise control of molecular motion. In this brief…

A beam of diatomic molecules scattered off a standing wave laser mode splits according to the rovibrational quantum state of the molecules. Our numerical calculation shows that single state resolution can be achieved by properly tuned,…

Coherent dark states in atoms, created by simultaneous interaction of two coherent light fields with a 3-level system, are of prime importance in quantum state manipulation. They are used extensively in quantum sensing and quantum…

We propose a mechanism to produce a superposition of atomic and molecular states by a train of ultrashort laser pulses combined with weak control fields. By adjusting the repetition rate of the pump pulses and the intensity of the coupling…

We trap neutral Cs atoms in a two-dimensional optical lattice and cool them close to the zero-point of motion by resolved-sideband Raman cooling. Sideband cooling occurs via transitions between the vibrational manifolds associated with a…