Related papers: A proposal for sympathetically cooling neutral mol…
Atomic physics was revolutionized by the development of forced evaporative cooling: it led directly to the observation of Bose-Einstein condensation, quantum-degenerate Fermi gases, and ultracold optical lattice simulations of condensed…
This article reviews the current state of the art in the field of cold and ultracold molecules and demonstrates that chemical reactions, inelastic collisions and dissociation of molecules at subKelvin temperatures can be manipulated with…
While ion heating by elastic electron-ion collisions may be neglected for a description of the evolution of freely expanding ultracold neutral plasmas, the situation is different in scenarios where the ions are laser-cooled during the…
Trapping of atoms and molecules in electrostatic, magnetic and optical traps has enabled studying atomic and molecular interactions on a timescale of many seconds, allowing observations of ultra-cold collisions and reactions. Here we report…
State-of-the-art {\em ab initio} techniques have been applied to compute the potential energy curves of the (BaRb)$^+$ molecular ion in the Born-Oppenheimer approximation. The long-range coefficients describing the electrostatic, induction,…
The prospects for shielding ultracold, paramagnetic, dipolar molecules from inelastic and chemical collisions are investigated. Molecules placed in their first rotationally excited states are found to exhibit effective long-range repulsion…
Demagnetization cooling relies on spin-orbit coupling that brings motional and spin degrees of freedom into thermal equilibrium. In the case of a gas, one has the advantage that the spin degree of freedom can be cooled very efficiently…
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…
The rich internal structure and long-range dipole-dipole interactions establish polar molecules as unique instruments for quantum-controlled applications and fundamental investigations. Their potential fully unfolds at ultracold…
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…
We are developing a new hybrid atom-ion trap to study the interaction of ultracold rubidium atoms with mass-selected OH- molecules. The ions are trapped inside an octupole rf-trap made of thin wires instead of the commonly used rods. This…
Molecules and atomic highly charged ions provide powerful low-energy probes of the fundamental laws of physics: Polar molecules possess internal fields suitable to enhance fundamental symmetry violation by several orders of magnitudes,…
The prospects of sympathetic cooling of polar molecules with magnetically co-trapped alkali-metal atoms are generally considered poor due to strongly anisotropic atom-molecule interactions leading to large spin relaxation rates. Using…
Using the ab initio computed Potential Energy Surface (PES) for the electronic interaction of the MgH$^+$ ($^1\Sigma$) ion with the He($^1$S) atom, we calculate the relevant state-changing rotationally inelastic collision cross sections…
We present quantum-theoretical studies of collisions between an open-shell S-state atom and a ^2Pi-state molecule in the presence of a magnetic field. We analyze the collisional Hamiltonian and discuss possible mechanisms for inelastic…
We propose a one-channel, simple model to describe the dynamics of ultracold dipolar molecules around a F\"orster resonance. Slightly above a specific electric field, a collisional shielding can take place, suppressing the molecular losses…
We consider a molecular single electron transistor coupled to a vibrational mode. For some values of the bias and gate voltage transport is possible only by absorption of one ore more phonons. The system acts then as a cooler for the…
We propose a general method to cool the translational motion of molecules. Our method is an extension of single photon atomic cooling which was successfully implemented in our laboratory. Requiring a single event of absorption followed by a…
Cooling forces result from the retarded dipole interaction between an illuminated particle and its reflection. For a one-dimensional example, we find cooling times of milliseconds and limiting temperatures in the millikelvin range. The…
We introduce, analyze, and compare two novel methods of Single Photon Cooling that generically cool and compress molecular gases. The first method compresses the molecular gas density by three orders of magnitude and increases collision…