Related papers: Rotational state microwave mixing for laser coolin…
The electronic energy level structure of yttrium monoxide (YO) provides a long-lived, low-lying $^{2}\Delta$ state ideal for high-precision molecular spectroscopy, narrowline laser cooling at the single photon-recoil limit, and studying…
Complex molecular structure demands customized solutions to laser cooling by extending its general set of principles and practices. Yttrium monoxide (YO) has unique intramolecular interactions. The Fermi-contact interaction dominates over…
We report laser cooling and trapping of yttrium monoxide (YO) molecules in an optical lattice. We show that gray molasses cooling remains exceptionally efficient for YO molecules inside the lattice with a molecule temperature as low as…
We report three-dimensional trapping of an oxide molecule (YO), using a radio-frequency magneto-optical trap (MOT). The total number of molecules loaded is $\sim$1.5$\times10^4$ , with a temperature of 7(1)~mK. This diversifies the frontier…
We demonstrate rotational cooling of the silicon monoxide cation via optical pumping by a spectrally filtered broadband laser. Compared with diatomic hydrides, SiO\+ is more challenging to cool because of its smaller rotational interval.…
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…
The development of the magneto-optical trap revolutionized the fields of atomic and quantum physics by providing a simple method for the rapid production of ultracold, trapped atoms. A similar technique for producing a diverse set of dense,…
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 present a method to design a finite decay rate for excited rotational states in polar molecules. The setup is based on a hybrid system of polar molecules with atoms driven into a Rydberg state. The atoms and molecules are coupled via the…
We report radiation pressure slowing of YbF molecules to low velocity. In YbF, laser slowing is hindered by leaks out of the optical cycle attributed to low-lying metastable electronic states arising from inner-shell excitation. We bring…
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…
In addition to being suitable for laser cooling and trapping in a magneto-optical trap (MOT) using a relatively broad ($\sim$5 MHz) transition, the molecule YO possesses a narrow-line transition. This forbidden transition between the…
We propose and analyze a scheme for sympathetic cooling of the translational motion of polar molecules in an optical lattice, interacting one by one with laser-cooled ions in a radio-frequency trap. The energy gap between the excitation…
A general method for rotational microwave spectroscopy and control of polar molecular ions via direct microwave addressing is considered. Our method makes use of spatially varying AC Stark shifts, induced by far off-resonant, focused laser…
Efficient sub-Doppler laser cooling and optical trapping of YO molecules offer new opportunities to study collisional dynamics in the quantum regime. Confined in a crossed optical dipole trap, we achieve the highest phase-space density of…
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…
Laser cooling of large, complex molecules is a long-standing goal, instrumental for enabling new quantum technology and precision measurements. A primary consideration for the feasibility of laser cooling, which determines the efficiency…
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,…
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…
We propose a method for laser cooling and trapping a substantial class of polar molecules, and in particular titanium (II) oxide (TiO). This method uses pulsed electric fields to nonadiabatically remix the ground-state magnetic sublevels of…