Berlin 2014 – scientific programme

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MO: Fachverband Molekülphysik

MO 14: Cold Molecules 2

MO 14.8: Talk

Thursday, March 20, 2014, 12:15–12:30, BEBEL HS213

Cavity cooling of free nanoparticles in high vacuum — •Stefan Kuhn, Peter Asenbaum, Stefan Nimmrichter, Ugur Sezer, and Markus Arndt — Faculty of Physics, VCQ, University of Vienna, Boltzmanngasse 5, Vienna A-1090, Austria

Resonant laser cooling techniques have given a great boost to the field of atomic physics throughout the last 30 years. Complex molecules and nanoparticles, however, cannot yet be controlled by these methods due to the lack of addressable cyclic transitions. In reply to this need, cavity cooling has been proposed more than 15 years ago [1, 2] and was recently realised experimentally with nanoparticles [3,4]. In this talk we will present our experimental results on transverse cavity cooling of free silicon nanoparticles in high vacuum [4]. We produce and launch them under high vacuum conditions such that they transit a high finesse optical cavity without any perturbation by a buffer gas. From the scattered light of the particles we can trace their dynamics in real time. We discuss modifications which are currently being set up to improve the cooling rate of the system. These advances will be crucial for future quantum coherence experiments with very massive nanoparticles[5].

[1] P. Horak et al., Phys. Rev. Lett., 79 (1997)

[2] V. Vuletic & S. Chu, Phys. Rev. Lett., 84 (2000)

[3] N. Kiesel et al., PNAS 110 (2013)

[4] P. Asenbaum et al., Nat. Commun. 4:2743 (2013)

[5] K. Hornberger et al., Rev. Mod. Phys., 84 (2012)