Related papers: Laser cooling of rotation and vibration by optical…
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…
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…
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 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…
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 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…
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 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…
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…
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 $X ^1\Sigma^+ (v=0)$…
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…
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 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…
We propose an alternative method to laser cooling. Our approach utilizes the extreme brightness of a supersonic atomic beam, and the adiabatic atomic coilgun to slow atoms in the beam or to bring them to rest. We show how internal-state…
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 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…
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.…
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…
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…
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…