Related papers: Photon spin molasses for laser cooling molecular r…
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…
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…
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,…
Doppler cooling is a widely used technique to laser cool atoms and nanoparticles exploiting the Doppler shift involved in translational transformations. The rotational Doppler effect arising from rotational coordinate transformations should…
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…
We propose a laser cooling concept for the translational motion of molecules which does not require repeated spontaneous emission by each molecule. The cooling works by repetition of three main steps: velocity selection of a narrow momentum…
We present a practical roadmap to achieve optical cycling and laser cooling of asymmetric top molecules (ATMs). Our theoretical analysis describes how reduced molecular symmetry, as compared to diatomic and symmetric non-linear molecules,…
Doppler cooling the center-of-mass motion of an optically levitated microsphere via the velocity dependent scattering force from narrow whispering gallery mode (WGM) resonances is described. Light that is red detuned from the WGM resonance…
Recent theoretical investigations have indicated that rapid optical cycling should be feasible in complex polyatomic molecules with diverse constituents, geometries and symmetries. However, as a composite molecular mass grows, so does the…
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…
Recently, laser cooling methods have been extended from atoms to molecules. The complex rotational and vibrational energy level structure of molecules makes laser cooling difficult, but these difficulties have been overcome and molecules…
When circularly polarized light is scattered from a rotating target, a rotational Doppler shift (RDS) emerges from an exchange of angular momentum between the spinning object and the electromagnetic field. Here, we used coherently spinning…
Sympathetic cooling of molecular ions through the Coulomb interaction with laser-cooled atomic ions is an efficient tool to prepare translationally cold molecules without, ideally, affecting the internal state of the molecular ions.…
The ability to cool atoms below the Doppler limit -- the minimum temperature reachable by Doppler cooling -- has been essential to most experiments with quantum degenerate gases, optical lattices and atomic fountains, among many other…
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…
Laser cooling to sub-Doppler temperatures by optical molasses is thought to be inhibited in atoms with unresolved, near-degenerate hyperfine structure in the excited state. We demonstrate that such cooling is possible in one to three…
For experiments that require a quantum system to be in the ultra-cold regime, laser cooling is an essential tool. While techniques for laser cooling ions and neutral atoms have been refined and temperatures below the Doppler limit have been…
In this paper we experimentally and theoretically investigate laser cooling of Strontium 88 atoms in one dimensional optical molasses. In our case, since the optical cooling dipole transition involves a $J_g=0$ groundstate, no Sisyphus-type…
A novel laser cooling mechanism was recently demonstrated using a narrow-linewidth optical transition. Counter-propagating laser beams are swept in frequency to cause adiabatic transfer between a ground state and excited state, and Doppler…
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…