Related papers: Optical pulse-shaping for internal cooling of mole…
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…
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…
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 investigate theoretically the application of tailored incoherent far-infrared fields in combination with laser excitation of a single rovibrational transition for rotational cooling of translationally cold polar diatomic molecules. The…
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…
We predict that it is possible to cool rotational, vibrational and translational degrees of freedom of molecules by coupling a molecular dipole transition to an optical cavity. The dynamics is numerically simulated for a realistic set of…
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…
The methods producing cold molecules from cold atoms tend to leave molecular ensembles with substantial residual internal energy. For instance, Cs2 molecules initially formed via photoassociation of cold Cs atoms are in several vibrational…
Laser cooling of translational motion of small molecules is performed by addressing transitions that ensure spontaneous emission cannot cause net rotational excitation. This will not be possible once the rotational splitting becomes…
We propose a method of stimulated laser cooling of diatomic molecules by counter-propagating $\pi$-trains of ultrashort laser pulses. The cooling cycles occur on the rovibrational transitions inside the same ground electronic manifold, thus…
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…
We present detailed calculations at the basis of our recent proposal for simultaneous cooling the rotational, vibrational and external molecular degrees of freedom. In this method, the molecular rovibronic states are coupled by an intense…
We propose an optical pumping scheme to prepare trapped $\mathrm{AlH}^+$ molecules in a pure state, the stretched hyperfine state $\lvert F=\frac{7}{2},\, m_F=\frac{7}{2}\rangle$ of the rovibronic ground manifold $\lvert…
The translational motion of molecular ions can be effectively cooled sympathetically to temperatures below 100 mK in ion traps through Coulomb interactions with laser-cooled atomic ions. The distribution of internal rovibrational states,…
A pulsed cooling scheme for optomechanical systems is presented that is capable of cooling at much faster rates, shorter overall cooling times, and for a wider set of experimental scenarios than is possible by conventional methods. The…
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 suggest a protocol for the sympathetic cooling of a molecular asymmetric top rotor co-trapped with laser-cooled atomic ions, based on resonant coupling between the molecular ion's electric dipole moment and a common normal mode of the…
Aluminium monofluoride (AlF) is a promising candidate for laser cooling and trapping at high densities. We show efficient production of AlF in a bright, pulsed cryogenic buffer gas beam, and demonstrate rapid optical cycling on the Q…
The direct laser cooling of neutral diatomic molecules in molecular beams suggests that trapped molecular ions can also be laser cooled. The long storage time and spatial localization of trapped molecular ions provides the opportunity for…
A general scheme for rotational cooling of diatomic heteronuclear molecules is proposed. It uses a superconducting microwave cavity to enhance the spontaneous decay via Purcell effect. Rotational cooling can be induced by sequentially…