Heidelberg 2015 – scientific programme
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MO: Fachverband Molekülphysik
MO 14: Cold Molecules 2
MO 14.1: Group Report
Wednesday, March 25, 2015, 14:30–15:00, PH/HS1
Rotational cooling of trapped polyatomic molecules — •Rosa Glöckner, Alexander Prehn, Martin Ibrügger, Martin Zeppenfeld, and Gerhard Rempe — Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik, Hans-Kopfermann-Str. 1, 85748 Garching, Germany
Due to their anisotropic long range interaction and many internal states, cold or ultracold polar molecular ensembles offer manifold possibilities for studying many-body physics and quantum information or quantum controlled collisions and chemistry. A prerequisite for all applications in quantum optics is thereby to gain and maintain control over the internal and external degrees of freedom.
In this talk, I present rotational state cooling of CH3F molecules via optical pumping. We exploit vibrational transitions to optically pump 16 M-sublevels of four rotational states into a single M level. With the combination of rotational and motional cooling [1,2] we are thus able to produce a trapped and cold (30mK) ensemble of CH3F molecules with more than 70 % of all molecules populating the same single M state. We expect this method to be applicable to a wide variety of molecular species, thus opening a route for quantum controlled experiments with polyatomic molecules.
[1] M. Zeppenfeld et. al., Phys. Rev. A 80, 041401 (2009).
[2] M. Zeppenfeld et al., Nature 491, 570-573 (2012).