Related papers: Laser cooling of molecules
This paper introduces and reviews light forces, atom cooling and atom trapping. The emphasis is on the physics of the basic processes. In discussing conservative forces the semi-classical dressed states are used rather than the usual…
Recent experiments have demonstrated direct cooling and trapping of diatomic and triatomic molecules in magneto-optical traps (MOTs). However, even the best molecular MOTs to date still have density $10^{-5}$ times smaller than in typical…
We show experimentally that 3-D laser cooling of lithium atoms is achieved when the laser light is tuned exactly to resonance with the atomic transition. For a theoretical description of this surprising phenomenon we resolve to a full model…
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…
Laser cooling and trapping of atoms and atomic ions has led to numerous advances including the observation of exotic phases of matter, development of exquisite sensors and state-of-the-art atomic clocks. The same level of control in…
Stark deceleration has been utilized for slowing and trapping several species of neutral, ground-state polar molecules generated in a supersonic beam expansion. Due to the finite physical dimension of the electrode array and practical…
We present new techniques in cooling 39K atoms using laser light close to the D1 transition. First, a new compressed-MOT configuration is taking advantage of gray molasses type cooling induced by blue-detuned D1 light. It yields an…
We propose a mechanism for the collective cooling of a large number N of trapped particles to very low temperatures by applying red-detuned laser fields and coupling them to the quantized field inside an optical resonator. The dynamics is…
We discuss the possibility of preparing highly entangled states by simply cooling atoms into the ground state of an applied interaction Hamiltonian. As in laser sideband cooling, we take advantage of a relatively large detuning of the…
We present a robust and fast laser cooling scheme suitable for trapped atoms and ions. Based on quantum interference, generated by a special laser configuration, it is able to rapidly cool the system such that the final phonon occupation…
A novel type of particle "cooling", called Ionization Cooling, is applicable to slow (v of the order of 0.1c) ions stored in a small ring. The many traversals through a thin foil enhance the nuclear reaction probability, in a steady…
Physics of enhanced optical cooling of particle beams in storage rings, nonlinear features of cooling and requirements to ring lattices, optical and laser systems are discussed
We demonstrate the measurement and manipulation of the temperature of cold CO molecules in a microchip environment. Through the use of time-resolved spatial imaging, we are able to observe the phase-space distribution of the molecules, and…
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…
During the last decade, the laser trapping technique has been actively applied to elucidate the property of macromolecules, DNA, RNA, cytoskeleton fibres, etc. Due to the inherent difficulty in the direct trapping of single molecules at…
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…
We present an analysis of the deceleration and trapping of heavy diatomic molecules in low-field seeking states by a moving electric potential. This moving potential is created by a 'ring-decelerator', which consists of a series of…
We predict that it is possible to cool rotational, vibrational and translational degrees of freedom of molecules by coupling a molecular dipole transition to an optical cavity. The dynamics is numerically simulated for a realistic set of…
We present a cooling method that should be generally applicable to atoms with narrow optical transitions. This technique uses velocity-selective pulses to drive atoms towards a zero-velocity dark state and then quenches the excited state to…
Reabsorption, the multiple scattering of spontaneously emitted photons in optically thick gases, is a major limitation to efficient optical pumping and laser cooling in ultracold gases. We report mitigation of reabsorption using spatial and…