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arXiv:0808.1383 · New Journal of Physics

Single-photon molecular cooling

Edvardas Narevicius, Stephen Travis Bannerman, Mark G. Raizen

Published May 14, 2009• 28 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

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 spontaneous emission, this method circumvents the need for a cycling transition and can be applied to any paramagnetic or polar molecule. In our approach, trapped molecules would be captured near their classical turning points in an optical dipole or RF-trap following an irreversible transition process.

DOI
10.1088/1367-2630/11/5/055046

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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 spontaneous emission, this method circumvents the need for a cycling transition and can be applied to any paramagnetic or polar molecule. In our approach, trapped molecules would be captured near their classical turning points in an optical dipole or RF-trap following an irreversible transition process.
Ultracold molecular gases are promising as an avenue to rich many-body physics, quantum chemistry, quantum information, and precision measurements. This richness, which flows from the complex internal structure of molecules, makes the creation of ultracold molecular gases using traditional methods (laser plus evaporative cooling) a challenge, in particular due to the spontaneous decay of molecules into dark states. We propose a way to circumvent this key bottleneck using an all-optical method for decelerating molecules using stimulated absorption and emission with a single ultrafast laser. We further describe single-photon cooling of the decelerating molecules that exploits their high dark state pumping rates, turning the principal obstacle to molecular laser cooling into an advantage. Cooling and deceleration may be applied simultaneously and continuously to load molecules into a trap. We discuss implementation details including multilevel numerical simulations of strontium monohydride. These techniques are applicable to a large number of molecular species and atoms with the only requirement being an electric dipole transition that can be accessed with an ultrafast laser.
Established optical cooling methods, employed in such traps as magneto-optical traps and optical molasses, work by means of a closed optical transition involving the absorption and spontaneous emission of large numbers of photons by each atom. This technique, therefore, cannot be extended to species-such as molecules-which, in general, do not have closed optical transitions. Finally, the lack of any requirement for having a closed optical transition implies that this method for cooling atoms may also be applicable to cooling molecules.
Abstract The extension of laser cooling and trapping techniques from atoms to molecules is currently the subject of intense and growing interest. Molecular laser cooling and trapping offers a general technique applicable to a variety of molecules with different properties and internal structures and is well-suited to the growing list of proposed applications for ultracold molecules. The recent development of optical cycling schemes for specific molecular species now allow each molecule to scatter up to ∼10 6 photons. This has proven sufficient for multiple groups to laser cool and slow molecular beams and, notably, capture molecules in magneto-optical traps (MOTs) and cool them to ultracold temperatures. MOTs are the workhorse technique for atomic physics in the ultracold regime and today’s molecular MOTs represent a powerful starting point for the study and manipulation of ultracold molecular gases. This Topical Review presents a summary of the progress made in this new and emerging field.
A laser-cooling scheme for molecules is presented based on repeated cycle of zero-velocity selection, deceleration, and irreversible accumulation. Although this scheme also employs a single spontaneous emission as in [Raymond Ooi, Marzlin, and Audretsch, Eur. Phys. J. D 22, 259 (2003)], in order to circumvent the difficulty of maintaining closed pumping cycles in molecules, there are two distinct features which make the cooling process of this scheme faster and more practical. First, the zero-velocity selection creates a narrow velocity-width population with zero mean velocity, such that no further deceleration (with many stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) pulses) is required. Second, only two STIRAP processes are required to decelerate the remaining hot molecular ensemble to create a finite population around zero velocity for the next cycle. We present a setup to realize the cooling process in one dimension with trapping in the other two dimensions using a Stark barrel. Numerical estimates of the cooling parameters and simulations with density matrix equations using OH molecules show the applicability of the cooling scheme. For a gas at temperature T=1T=1T=1 K, the estimated cooling time is only 222 ms, with phase-space density increased by about 30 times. The possibility of extension to three-dimensional cooling via thermalization is also discussed.