Related papers: Slowing YbF molecules using radiation pressure
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…
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…
A method for decelerating a continuous beam of neutral polar molecules is theoretically demonstrated. This method utilizes non-uniform, static electric fields and regions of adiabatic population transfer to generate a mechanical force that…
A cryogenic buffer gas beam, an electrostatic hexapole lens, and 2D transverse Doppler laser cooling are combined to produce a bright beam of barium monofluoride ($^{138}$Ba$^{19}$F) molecules. Experimental results and trajectory…
We propose a scheme to transfer molecules from a slow beam into an optical trap using only a single photon absorption and emission cycle. The efficiency of such a scheme is numerically explored for BaF using realistic experimental…
We report the Stark deceleration of CaF molecules in the strong-field seeking ground state and in a weak-field seeking component of a rotationally-excited state. We use two types of decelerator, a conventional Stark decelerator for the…
We demonstrate slow and stored light in Rb vapor with a combination of desirable features: minimal loss and distortion of the pulse shape, and large fractional delay (> 10). This behavior is enabled by: (i) a group index that can be…
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…
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 deflection of rotating symmetric molecules by inhomogeneous optical and static electric fields, compare results with the case of linear molecules, and find new singularities in the distribution of the scattering angle.…
Laser-plasma accelerators offer a compact means of producing high-energy electron beams, but their performance is fundamentally limited by dephasing between the accelerated electrons and the plasma wave. To overcome this limitation, we…
Here we investigate the use of passive intracavity optical filters for controlling the laser output spectrum of a polarization-mode-locked, ultrafast Ytterbium fiber laser. With strategic placement of the filter cutoff frequency, the…
We consider deflection of polarizable molecules by inhomogeneous optical fields, and analyze the role of molecular orientation and rotation in the scattering process. It is shown that molecular rotation induces spectacular rainbow-like…
A novel two-stage helium buffer gas cooled beam source is introduced. The properties of the molecular beams produced from this source are investigated theoretically using the CaF as a test molecule. The gas-phase molecules are first…
We developed a high-power laser system at a wavelength of 399 nm for laser cooling of ytterbium atoms with ultraviolet laser diodes. The system is composed of an external cavity laser diode providing frequency stabilized output at a power…
We report on the electrostatic trapping of neutral SrF molecules. The molecules are captured from a cryogenic buffer-gas beam source into the moving traps of a 4.5 m long traveling-wave Stark decelerator. The SrF molecules in…
We demonstrate and characterize Zeeman-Sisyphus (ZS) deceleration of a beam of ytterbium monohydroxide (YbOH). Our method uses a combination of large magnetic fields ($\sim$ 2.5 T) and optical spin-flip transitions to decelerate molecules…
We explore a technique for decelerating molecules using a static magnetic field and optical pumping. Molecules travel through a spatially varying magnetic field and are repeatedly pumped into a weak-field seeking state as they move towards…
The term `laser cooling' is applied to the use of optical means to cool the motional energies of either atoms and molecules, or micromirrors. In the literature, these two strands are kept largely separate; both, however suffer from severe…
We have probed the fragmentation dynamics in a bent triatomic molecule, water, a non-planar molecule, methanol, and a planar ring-structured molecule, benzene, using 100 fs duration pulses of linearly and circularly polarized, infrared,…