Related papers: Slowing YbF molecules using radiation pressure
Molecules containing a lanthanide atom have sets of electronic states arising from excitation of an inner-shell electron. These states have received little attention, but are thought to play an important role in laser cooling of such…
We demonstrate the deceleration of heavy polar molecules in low-field seeking states by combining a cryogenic source and a travelling-wave Stark decelerator. The cryogenic source provides a high intensity beam with low speed and…
We report on the deceleration of a beam of SrF molecules from 290 to 120~m/s. Following supersonic expansion, the molecules in the $X^2\Sigma$ ($v=0$, $N=1$) low-field seeking states are trapped by the moving potential wells of a…
Aluminium monofluoride (AlF) is a promising candidate for laser cooling and trapping at high densities. We show efficient production of AlF in a bright, pulsed cryogenic buffer gas beam, and demonstrate rapid optical cycling on the Q…
We study the dynamics of a supersonic molecular beam in a low-finesse optical cavity and demonstrate that most molecules in the beam can be decelerated to zero central velocity by the intracavity optical field in a process analogous to…
Strong optical forces with minimal spontaneous emission are desired for molecular deceleration and atom interferometry applications. We report experimental benchmarking of such a stimulated optical force driven by ultrafast laser pulses. We…
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…
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…
We present a thorough analysis of a Zeeman slower for sodium atoms made of permanent magnets in a Halbach configuration. Due to the orientation of the magnetic field, the polarisation of the slowing laser beam cannot be purely circular…
We demonstrate a quasi optical cycling for the $X(v=0)\to A(v'=0)$ transition and a radiative force induced deflection on the buffer-gas cooled BaF molecular beam. The laser induced fluorescence enhancement with additional sidebands and a…
We show that the propagation of light in a Doppler broadened medium can be slowed down considerably eventhough such medium exhibits very flat dispersion. The slowing down is achieved by the application of a saturating counter propagating…
We propose to sympathetically slow and cool polar molecules in a cold, low-density beam using laser-cooled Rydberg atoms. The elastic collision cross sections between molecules and Rydberg atoms are large enough to efficiently thermalize…
Diatomic molecules are promising systems for quantum science applications due to their complex energy structures and strong dipole-dipole interactions. Achieving ultracold temperatures is essential for these applications, but the complexity…
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…
A lightsail can be accelerated to ultra-high speed by the radiation pressure of a laser having an intensity of the order of GW/m$^2$, which though presents a critical challenge in the thermal management of lightsails. In this letter, we…
Employing a two-stage cryogenic buffer gas cell, we produce a cold, hydrodynamically extracted beam of calcium monohydride molecules with a near effusive velocity distribution. Beam dynamics, thermalization and slowing are studied using…
In this paper we investigate the feasibility of Zeeman slowing calcium monofluoride (CaF) molecules originating from a cryogenic buffer gas cell. We measure the $A^2\Pi_{1/2} (v=0, J=\frac{1}{2}) - X^2\Sigma_{1/2} (v=0, N=1)$ hyperfine…
Ab initio calculation of the hyperfine, P-odd, and P,T-odd constants for the YbF molecule was performed with the help of the recently developed technique, which allows to take into account correlations and polarization in the outercore…
The problem of slowing down light by orders of magnitude has been extensively discussed in the literature. Such a possibility can be useful in a variety of optical and microwave applications. Many qualitatively different approaches have…
We demonstrate stabilisation of an ultraviolet diode laser via Doppler free spectroscopy of Ytterbium ions in a discharge. Our technique employs polarization spectroscopy, which produces a natural dispersive lineshape whose zero-crossing is…