Hannover 2016 – scientific programme

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MO: Fachverband Molekülphysik

MO 19: Posters 4: Novelties in Molecular Physics: Femtosecond Spectroscopy, Molecular Clusters, Cold Molecules and Helium Droplets

MO 19.27: Poster

Thursday, March 3, 2016, 16:30–19:00, Empore Lichthof

Characterization of Microstructured Electric Trap for Optoelectrical Cooling of Polar Molecules — •Martin Ibrügger, Alexander Prehn, Rosa Glöckner, Martin Zeppenfeld, and Gerhard Rempe — Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik, Hans-Kopfermann-Str. 1, 85748 Garching

Due to their rich internal level structure, polar molecules offer a wide range of exciting applications such as quantum simulation and controlled chemistry. However, many applications rely on long interaction times and localization, thus requiring trapping of the molecules. In our approach the trap consists of a pair of microstructured capacitor plates [1] creating a box-like potential. With this configuration we achieve record-long lifetimes for polar polyatomic molecules and dramatically reduce Stark broadening, therefore providing the optimal environment for optoelectrical Sisyphus cooling.

Here we investigate the properties of our trap with cooled formaldehyde [2]. We find 1/e trap decay times of up to one minute and confirm via Stark spectroscopy [3] the box-like potential. A homogeneous offset field inside the trap allows us to spectroscopically resolve transitions between single M sublevels of different rotational states. This enables us to control the rotational state and prepare the molecules in single M sublevels by optical pumping [4].

[1] B.G.U. Englert et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 263003 (2011).

[2] A. Prehn et al., arXiv:1511.09427 (2015).

[3] R. Glöckner et al., New J. Phys. 17, 055022 (2015).

[4] R. Glöckner et al., arXiv:1511.07360 (2015).