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arXiv:2506.12892

Blue-detuned Magneto-optical Trap of BaF molecules

Zixuan Zeng, Shoukang Yang, Shuhua Deng, Bo Yan

Published Jun 15, 2025• 1 citation
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Abstract

We report the realization of a blue-detuned magneto-optical trap (BDM) of BaF molecules. The (1 + 1) type BDM and (1 + 2) type conveyor-belt MOT are explored. While the (1+1) BDM provides only weak trapping force, the conveyor-belt MOT significantly compresses the molecular cloud, achieving a radius of 320(20) μm, a temperature of 240(60) μK, and a peak density of 1.3{\times}10^7 cm^{-3}, representing a significant improvement over the red MOT. Interestingly, the conveyor-belt MOT of BaF exhibits a large capture velocity, and the loading efficiency from red MOT reaches near unity even without gray molasses. We confirm this by directly loading slowed molecules into the conveyor-belt MOT.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2506.12892

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arXiv:2606.21944•Jun 20, 2026•0 citations
We report the realization of a blue-detuned magneto-optical trap (BDM) of BaF molecules. The (1 + 1) type BDM and (1 + 2) type conveyor-belt MOT are explored. While the (1+1) BDM provides only weak trapping force, the conveyor-belt MOT significantly compresses the molecular cloud, achieving a radius of 320(20) μm, a temperature of 240(60) μK, and a peak density of 1.3{\times}10^7 cm^{-3}, representing a significant improvement over the red MOT. Interestingly, the conveyor-belt MOT of BaF exhibits a large capture velocity, and the loading efficiency from red MOT reaches near unity even without gray molasses. We confirm this by directly loading slowed molecules into the conveyor-belt MOT.
We report the realization of a blue-detuned magneto-optical trap (BDM) of BaF molecules. The (1+1) type BDM and (1+2) type conveyor-belt MOT (CB-MOT) are explored. While the (1+1) BDM provides only a weak trapping force, the CB-MOT significantly compresses the molecular cloud, achieving a Gaussian rms width of 316 μm, a temperature of 240 μK, and a peak number density of 2.4×10^{7} cm^{-3}. This performance marks two orders of magnitude improvement over red-detuned MOTs. More importantly, we demonstrate the efficient direct loading of the CB-MOT from a slowed molecular beam, surpassing the loading efficiency of the standard dual-frequency MOT. This surprising result is attributed to the dipole-force-dominated trapping mechanism, wherein the capture velocity increases continuously with laser power, unimpeded by the saturation limit of photon scattering. This method is particularly advantageous for laser cooling and trapping challenging molecular species with large mass, small photon recoil, and narrow linewidths.
Abstract Laser cooling is used to produce ultracold atoms and molecules for quantum science and precision measurement applications. Molecules are more challenging to cool than atoms due to their vibrational and rotational internal degrees of freedom. Molecular rotations lead to the use of type-II transitions ( F ⩾ F ′ ) for magneto-optical trapping (MOT). When typical red detuned light frequencies are applied to these transitions, sub-Doppler heating is induced, resulting in higher temperatures and larger molecular cloud sizes than realized with the type-I MOTs most often used with atoms. To improve type-II MOTs, Jarvis et al (2018 Phys. Rev. Lett. 120 083201) proposed a blue-detuned MOT to be applied after initial cooling and capture with a red-detuned MOT. This was successfully implemented (Burau et al 2023 Phys. Rev. Lett. 130 193401; Jorapur et al 2024 Phys. Rev. Lett. 132 163403; Li et al 2024 Phys. Rev. Lett. 132 233402), realizing colder and denser molecular samples. Very recently, Hallas et al (2024 arXiv:2404.03636) demonstrated a blue-detuned MOT with a ‘1+2’ configuration that resulted in even stronger compression of the molecular cloud. Here, we describe and characterize theoretically the conveyor-belt mechanism that underlies this observed enhanced compression. We perform numerical simulations of the conveyor-belt mechanism using both stochastic Schrödinger equation and optical Bloch equation approaches. We investigate the conveyor-belt MOT characteristics in relation to laser parameters, g-factors and the structure of the molecule, and find that conveyor-belt trapping should be applicable to a wide range of laser-coolable molecules.
We report the experimental realization of a conveyor-belt magneto-optical trap for calcium monofluoride (CaF) molecules. The obtained highly-compressed cloud has a mean radius of 64(5) μμμm and a peak number density of 3.6(5)×10103.6(5) \times 10^{10}3.6(5)×1010 cm−3^{-3}−3, a 600-fold increase over the conventional red-detuned MOTs of CaF, and the densest molecular MOT observed to date. Subsequent loading of these molecules into an optical dipole trap yields up to 2.6×1042.6 \times 10^42.6×104 trapped molecules at a temperature of 14(2) μμμK with a peak phase-space density of ∼2.4×10−6\sim 2.4 \times 10^{-6}∼2.4×10−6. This opens new possibilities for a range of applications utilizing high-density, optically trapped ultracold molecules.
Abstract Achieving high-density samples of laser-cooled molecules is a critical step toward advancing applications in precision measurements, ultracold chemistry and quantum science. We report the experimental realization of a high-density conveyor-belt magneto-optical trap for calcium monofluoride (CaF) molecules. The obtained highly-compressed cloud has a mean radius of 64(5) μ m and a peak number density of 3.6(5) x 10 10 cm -3 , a 600-fold increase over the conventional red-detuned MOTs of CaF, and the densest molecular MOT observed to date. Subsequent loading of these molecules into an optical dipole trap yields up to 2.6 x 10 4 trapped molecules at a temperature of 14(2) μ K with a peak phase-space density of ~2.4 x 10 -6 . This opens new possibilities for a range of applications utilizing high-density, optically trapped ultracold molecules.
A key method to produce trapped and laser-cooled molecules is the magneto-optical trap (MOT), which is conventionally created using light red detuned from an optical transition. In this work, we report a MOT for CaF molecules created using blue-detuned light. The blue-detuned MOT (BDM) achieves temperatures well below the Doppler limit and provides the highest densities and phase-space densities reported to date in CaF MOTs. Our results suggest that BDMs are likely achievable in many relatively light molecules including polyatomic ones, but our measurements suggest that BDMs will be challenging to realize in substantially heavier molecules due to sub-mK trap depths. In addition to record temperatures and densities, we find that the BDM substantially simplifies and enhances the loading of molecules into optical tweezer arrays, which are a promising platform for quantum simulation and quantum information processing. Notably, the BDM reduces molecular number requirements ninefold compared to a conventional red-detuned MOT, while not requiring additional hardware. Our work therefore substantially simplifies preparing large-scale molecular tweezer arrays, which are a novel platform for simulation of quantum many-body dynamics and quantum information processing with molecular qubits.
Conveyor-belt magneto-optical traps (CB-MOTs) use blue-detuned polarization-gradient forces to provide simultaneous cooling, confinement, and loading on type-II molecular transitions. Recent experiments with \baf{138} showed that this mechanism can directly load a slowed molecular beam with an efficiency exceeding that of a conventional red-detuned MOT. Here we use established optical-Bloch-equation force calculations and classical trajectory propagation to ask whether this direct-loading strategy should extend beyond the specific molecule used in the first demonstration. For \baf{138}, the calculation reproduces the experimentally observed trend that the CB-MOT capture velocity increases with laser intensity. We then apply the same framework to two closely related but experimentally distinct cases: \baf{137}, whose dense hyperfine structure complicates a conventional dual-frequency MOT, and \bah{138}, whose narrower linewidth and longer wavelength reduce the available radiative force. In both cases, the CB-MOT retains a broad region of nonzero capture velocity. These results identify the molecular conditions under which direct CB-MOT loading should remain effective and show that the dipole-force-dominated conveyor-belt mechanism provides a practical loading route for heavy laser-coolable molecules whose MOT performance is otherwise limited by photon recoil, scattering rate, or hyperfine complexity.