Related papers: Prospects for laser cooling of polyatomic molecule…
Sideband cooling is a popular method for cooling atoms to the ground state of an optical trap. Applying the same method to molecules requires a number of challenges to be overcome. Strong tensor Stark shifts in molecules cause the optical…
We study theoretically the behavior of laser-cooled calcium monofluoride (CaF) molecules in an optical molasses and magneto-optical trap (MOT), and compare our results to recent experiments. We use multi-level optical Bloch equations to…
Recently a new wave of interest to spectroscopy of radioactive compounds has raised due to successful applications of the new experimental ISOL/CRIS technique to optical spectroscopy of radium monofluoride molecules. This opens great…
Strong-field ionization of polar molecules contains rich dynamical processes such as tunneling, excitation, and Stark shift. These processes occur on a sub-cycle time scale and are difficult to distinguish in ultrafast measurements. Here,…
Rapid progress in cooling and trapping of molecules has enabled first experiments on high resolution spectroscopy of trapped diatomic molecules, promising unprecedented precision. Extending this work to polyatomic molecules provides unique…
We have developed and demonstrated a scheme to achieve rotationally-closed photon cycling in polyatomic molecules with complex hyperfine structure and sensitivity to hadronic symmetry violation, specifically $^{171}$YbOH and $^{173}$YbOH.…
A new possibility of laser cooling of alkaline-earth-metal and Ytterbium atoms using a two-photon transition is analyzed. We consider a $^{1}S_{0}$ - $^{1}S_{0}$ transition, with excitation in near resonance with the $^{1}P_{1}$ level. This…
Massless particles, including photons, are not governed by particle conservation law during their typical interaction with matter even at low energies, and thus have no chemical potential. However, in driven systems, near equilibrium…
Laser cooling of alkali atoms typically requires time-varying magnetic fields, introducing unwanted coupling between atom preparation and coherent operations. Here we demonstrate sub-Doppler laser cooling and optical transport of alkali…
This article presents a new particle beam cooling scheme, namely cyclotron maser cooling (CMC). Relativistic gyrating particles, forced by a solenoidal magnetic field over some length of their trajectory, move in a helical path and undergo…
It has been roughly three decades since laser cooling techniques produced ultracold atoms, leading to rapid advances in a vast array of fields. Unfortunately laser cooling has not yet been extended to molecules because of their complex…
We present the first experimental demonstration of radiation pressure force deflection and direct laser cooling for barium monohydride (BaH) molecules resulting from multiple photon scattering. Despite a small recoil velocity (2.7 mm/s) and…
Atoms in spatially dependent light fields are attracted to local intensity maxima or minima depending on the sign of the frequency difference between the light and the atomic resonance. For light fields confined in open high-Q optical…
We consider a laser cooling and trapping of alkaline-earth and similar atoms in a bichromatic field resonant to a closed optical transition $^1S_0 \to \, ^1P_1$ or $^1S_0 \to \, ^3P_1$. It is shown that new kinetic effects emerge compared…
The semiclassical dynamics of atoms are theoretically studied, when the atoms are confined inside a standing-wave high-finesse resonator. The atoms are cooled by scattering processes in which the photons of a transverse laser are coherently…
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…
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 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…
Only bosonic molecular species have been directly laser cooled to date, primarily due to an abundance of bosonic isotopes in nature and to their simpler hyperfine structure. Fermionic molecules provide new opportunities for ultracold…
Rydberg alkaline earth atoms are promising tools for quantum simulation and metrology. When one of the two valence electrons is promoted to long-lived circular states, the second valence electron can be optically manipulated without…