We present a time-independent quantum formalism to describe the dynamics of molecules with permanent electric dipole moments in a two-dimensional confined geometry such as a one-dimensional optical lattice, in the presence of an electric field. Bose versus Fermi statistics and selection rules play a crucial role in the dynamics. As examples, we compare the dynamics of confined fermionic and bosonic polar KRb molecules under different confinements and electric fields. We show how chemical reactions can be suppressed, either by a ``statistical suppression'' which applies for fermions at small electric fields and confinements, or by a ``potential energy suppression,'' which applies for both fermions and bosons at high electric fields and confinements. We also explore collisions that transfer molecules from one state of the confining potential to another. Although these collisions can be significant, we show that they do not play a role in the loss of the total number of molecules in the gas.
In this thesis we derive a set of bosonization rules for the problem of a fermionic interacting system living on the half line coupled to a quantum degree of freedom at a boundary. This is an appropriate model to describe the physics of an electronic system in quantum wires with impurities. First we derive the bosonization rules for free fermions on a half-line with physically sensible boundary conditions for Luttinger fermions. We use path-integral methods to calculate the bosonized fermionic currents on the half-line and derive their commutation relations for a system with a boundary. We compute the fermion determinant of the fermionic fluctuations for a system with a boundary using Forman's approach. We find that the degrees of freedom induced at the boundary do not modify the commutation relations of the bulk. We give an explicit derivation of the bosonization rules for the fermion operators for a system with boundaries. We derive a set of bosonization rules for the Fermi operators which include the explicit effect of the boundaries and of boundary degrees of freedom. As a byproduct, we calculate the one-particle Green's function and determine the effects of the boundaries on its analytic structure.