Related papers: Optical pulse-shaping for internal cooling of mole…
Recent work with laser-cooled molecules in attractive optical traps has shown that the differential AC Stark shifts arising from the trap light itself can become problematic, limiting collisional shielding efficiencies, rotational coherence…
Over the past decade, tremendous progress has been made to extend the tools of laser cooling and trapping to molecules. Those same tools have recently been applied to polyatomic molecules (molecules containing three or more atoms). In this…
We present a theoretical study of the impact of an electrostatic field combined with nonresonant linearly polarized laser pulses on the rotational dynamics of a thermal ensemble of linear molecules. We solve the time-dependent Schr\"odinger…
Several laser techniques have been suggested and demonstrated recently for preparing polarizable molecules in rapidly spinning states with a disc-like angular distribution. We consider motion of these spinning discs in inhomogeneous fields,…
The general idea that optical radiation may cool matter was put forward by Pringsheim already in 1929. Doppler cooling of dilute atomic gases is an extremely successful application of this concept, and more recently anti-Stokes cooling in…
We review on the theoretical status of intense laser orientation and alignment. The evolution of the rotational wave packet and its dynamics leading to orientation and alignment is the topic of the present discussion. The major part of the…
We theoretically and numerically analyze x-ray scattering from asymmetric-top molecules three-dimensionally aligned using elliptically polarized laser light. A rigid-rotor model is assumed. The principal axes of the polarizability tensor…
We have developed and demonstrated a scheme to achieve rotationally-closed photon cycling in polyatomic molecules with complex hyperfine structure and sensitivity to hadronic symmetry violation, specifically $^{171}$YbOH and $^{173}$YbOH.…
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 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…
Controlling the internal degrees of freedom is a key challenge for applications of cold and ultracold molecules. Here, we demonstrate rotational-state cooling of trapped methyl fluoride molecules (CH3F) by optically pumping the population…
Following excitation by a strong ultra-short laser pulse, molecules develop coordinated rotational motion, exhibiting transient alignment along the direction of the laser electric field, followed by periodic full and fractional revivals…
We report three orders of magnitude optical cooling of the fundamental torsional mode of a 5 mm-long, 550 nm diameter optical nanofiber. The rotation of the nanofiber couples to the polarization of guided laser fields. We use a weak laser…
Polar polyatomic molecules provide an ideal but largely unexplored platform to encode qubits in rotational states. Here, we trap cold (100-600 mK) formaldehyde (H$_2$CO) inside an electric box and perform a Ramsey-type experiment to observe…
Plasma dynamics critically depends on density and temperature, thus well-controlled experimental realizations are essential benchmarks for theoretical models. The formation of an ultracold plasma can be triggered by ionizing a tunable…
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…
We analyze the alignment of molecules generated by a pair of crossed ultra-short pump pulses of different polarizations by a technique based on the induced time-dependent gratings. Parallel polarizations yield an intensity grating, while…
The ability of laser cooling for relativistic ion beams is investigated. For this purpose, the excitation of relativistic ions with a continuous wave and a pulsed laser is analyzed, utilizing the optical Bloch equations. The laser cooling…
Optically trapped dielectric objects are well suited for reaching the quantum regime of their center of mass motion in an ultra-high vacuum environment. We show that ground state cooling of an optically trapped nanosphere is achievable when…
Observing a physical quantity without disturbing it is a key capability for the control of individual quantum systems. Such back-action-evading or quantum-non-demolition measurements were first introduced in the 1970s in the context of…