Related papers: Deceleration and trapping of heavy diatomic molecu…
Measurements of the electron's electric dipole moment (eEDM) are demanding tests of physics beyond the Standard Model. We describe how ultracold YbF molecules could be used to improve the precision of eEDM measurements by two to three…
Laser spectroscopy of cold and trapped molecular ions is a powerful tool for fundamental physics, including the determination of fundamental constants, the laboratory test for their possible variation, and the search for a possible electric…
We consider deflection of rotating symmetric molecules by inhomogeneous optical and static electric fields, compare results with the case of linear molecules, and find new singularities in the distribution of the scattering angle.…
This dissertation studies spin squeezing, entanglement and decoherence in large ensembles of cold, trapped alkali atoms with hyperfine spin f interacting with optical fields. Restricting the state of each atom to a qutrit embedded in the…
Molecules have vibrational, rotational, spin-orbit and hyperfine degrees of freedom or quantum states, each of which responds in a unique fashion to external electromagnetic radiation. The control over superpositions of these quantum states…
We describe an approach to optically trapping small, chemically stable molecules at cryogenic temperatures by buffer-gas loading a deep optical dipole trap. The ~10 K trap depth will be produced by a tightly-focused, 1064-nm cavity capable…
We demonstrate that a bichromatic standing-wave laser field can exert a significantly larger force on a molecule than ordinary radiation pressure. Our experiment measures the deflection of a pulsed supersonic beam of CaF molecules by a…
A free-parameter linear-combination-of-atomic-orbitals approach is presented for analyzing the stopping power of slow ions moving in a metal. The method is applied to the case of He moving in alkali metals. Mean stopping powers for He…
We provide a theory of the deflection of polar and non-polar rotating molecules by inhomogeneous static electric field. Rainbow-like features in the angular distribution of the scattered molecules are analyzed in detail. Furthermore, we…
We demonstrate sub-Doppler laser cooling and magneto-optical trapping of the rare earth element Holmium. Atoms are loaded from an atomic beam source and captured in six-beam $\sigma_+ - \sigma_-$ molasses using a strong $J=15/2…
We introduce a scheme for deep laser cooling of molecules based on robust dark states at zero velocity. By simulating this scheme, we show it to be a widely applicable method that can reach the recoil limit or below. We demonstrate and…
Quantum technologies use entanglement to outperform classical technologies, and often employ strong cooling and isolation to protect entangled entities from decoherence by random interactions. Here we show that the opposite strategy -…
We propose to control light trapping in a large ensemble of cold atoms by an external, static magnetic field. For an appropriate choice of frequency and polarization of the exciting pulse, the field is expected to speed up the fluorescence…
Orbital optical trapping of a dielectric micro-particle in air was studied experimentally using a lensed, counter-propagating dual-beam trap, and by numerical simulations employing ray optics. The essential attributes of particle dynamics…
We demonstrate a scheme for optical cycling in the polar, diatomic molecule strontium monofluoride (SrF) using the $X ^2\Sigma^+\toA^2\Pi_{1/2}$ electronic transition. SrF's highly diagonal Franck-Condon factors suppress vibrational…
We present a new design of highly specialized small storage rings for low energy polarized electron beams. The new design is based on the transparent spin methodology that cancels the spin precession due to the magnetic dipole moment at any…
This article investigates entanglement of the motional states of massive coupled oscillators. The specific realization of an idealized diatomic molecule in one-dimension is considered, but the techniques developed apply to any massive…
Heavy polar diatomic molecules are the leading candidates in searches for the permanent electric dipole moment of the electron (eEDM). Next-generation eEDM search experiments ideally require extremely large coherence times, in large…
N$_2$ molecules traveling in pulsed supersonic beams have been excited from their ${\mathrm{X\,^1\Sigma_{\mathrm{g}}^+}}$ ground electronic state to long-lived Rydberg states with principal quantum numbers between 39 and 48 using a…
We report on the Stark deceleration and electrostatic trapping of $^{14}$NH ($a ^1\Delta$) radicals. In the trap, the molecules are excited on the spin-forbidden $A ^3\Pi \leftarrow a ^1\Delta$ transition and detected via their subsequent…