Laser Cooling and Trapping of Diatomic Molecules

Abstract

The overall theme of this project was to continue developing methods for direct laser cooling and trapping of molecules. This built off our prior demonstration of the first-ever magneto-optical trap (MOT) for a molecule, using strontium monofluoride (SrF). The MOT is the workhorse technique for creating ultracold atomic gases, and one of our aims was to make the molecular MOT a similarly powerful and versatile tool. The specific major goals of this work included: --Increase the phase-space density of SrF molecules trapped in a MOT --Transfer SrF molecules to a conservative trap --Study ultracold atom-molecule and/or molecule-molecule collisions using SrF --Apply large optical forces to molecules using a novel tunable laser system Since work began on the grant, we also opened a new line of research, with the goal to investigate the prospects for laser cooling and trapping a novel molecular species, TlF.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jun 09, 2019
Accession Number
AD1189373

Entities

People

  • David DeMille

Organizations

  • Yale University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Collisions
  • Contractors
  • Cooling
  • Data Acquisition
  • Detection
  • Diatomic Molecules
  • Governments
  • Hyperfine Structure
  • Laser Cooling
  • Laser Induced Fluorescence
  • Lasers
  • Magnetic Fields
  • Magneto Optical Traps
  • Molecules
  • Optical Lattices
  • Radio Frequency
  • Scattering
  • Standards
  • Students
  • Tunable Lasers

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Aerospace Engineering.
  • Molecular Photonics/Laser Physics
  • Systems Analysis and Design

Technology Areas

  • Directed Energy
  • Space