Related papers: Large molasses-like cooling forces for molecules u…
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 report on the realization of sub-Doppler laser cooling of sodium atoms in gray molasses using the D1 optical transition ($3s\, ^2S_{1/2} \rightarrow 3p\, ^2P_{1/2}$) at 589.8 nm. The technique is applied to samples containing…
Doppler and Sisyphus cooling of $^{174}$YbOH are achieved and studied. This polyatomic molecule has high sensitivity to physics beyond the Standard Model and represents a new class of species for future high-precision probes of new…
Beams of atoms and molecules are stalwart tools for spectroscopy and studies of collisional processes. The supersonic expansion technique can create cold beams of many species of atoms and molecules. However, the resulting beam is typically…
Light forces can be harnessed to levitate mesoscopic objects and cool them down towards their motional quantum ground state. Significant roadblocks on the way to scale up levitation from a single to multiple particles in close proximity are…
We demonstrate simultaneous deceleration and trapping of a cold atomic and molecular mixture. This is the first step towards studies of cold atom-molecule collisions at low temperatures as well as application of sympathetic cooling. Both…
In the last years, it was demonstrated that neutral molecules can be loaded on a microchip directly from a supersonic beam. The molecules are confined in microscopic traps that can be moved smoothly over the surface of the chip. Once the…
Cold supersonic beams of molecules can be slowed down using a switched sequence of electrostatic field gradients. The energy to be removed is proportional to the mass of the molecules. Here we report deceleration of YbF, which is 7 times…
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 theoretical analysis of a novel scheme for optical cooling of particles that does not in principle require a closed optical transition. A tightly confined laser beam interacting with a trapped particle experiences a phase…
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…
Supersonic beams of polar molecules are deflected using inhomogeneous electric fields. The quantum-state selectivity of the deflection is used to spatially separate molecules according to their quantum state. A detailed analysis of the…
A high-intensity supersonic beam source has been a key component in studies of molecular collisions, molecule-surface interaction, chemical reactions, and precision spectroscopy. However, the molecular density available for experiments in a…
Laser slowing of CaF molecules down to the capture velocity of a magneto-optical trap (MOT) for molecules is achieved. Starting from a two-stage buffer gas beam source, we apply frequency-broadened "white-light" slowing and observe…
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…
A rational approach to identify polyatomic molecules that appear to be promising candidates for direct Doppler cooling with lasers is outlined. First-principle calculations for equilibrium structures and Franck--Condon factors of selected…
Laser cooling is fundamental to quantum computing and metrology using atomic systems. Precise control often requires cooling atoms' motional degrees of freedom to the quantum ground state, imposing operation time and architectural…
Polyatomic molecules provide complex internal structures that are ideal for applications in quantum information science, quantum simulation, and precision searches for physics beyond the Standard Model. A key feature of polyatomic molecules…
We present a rigorous theoretical study of low-temperature collisions of polyatomic molecular radicals with ^1S_0 atoms in the presence of an external magnetic field. Accurate quantum scattering calculations based on ab initio and scaled…
A new perspective on how to manipulate molecules by means of very strong laser pulses is emerging with insights from the so-called light-induced potentials, which are the adiabatic potential energy surfaces of molecules severely distorted…