Mainz 2017 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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MO: Fachverband Molekülphysik

MO 2: Precision Experiments on Small Molecules

MO 2.1: Vortrag

Montag, 6. März 2017, 14:30–14:45, N 25

Doppler-limited precision spectroscopy of cold formaldehyde in an electric trap — •Martin Ibrügger, Alexander Prehn, Martin Zeppenfeld, and Gerhard Rempe — Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik, Hans-Kopfermann-Str. 1, 85748 Garching

Besides cooling, trapping has proven to be a key ingredient for high precision spectroscopy of many atomic species as can be seen in e.g. various optical clock experiments around the world. For molecules however, in particular polyatomic molecules, there are few to none experiments in a trap employing cooling to cold temperatures to increase control and reduce linewidths.

Here, we present microwave spectroscopy on a magic transition between rotational levels of trapped formaldehyde. The molecules are stored in an electric trap [1] and cooled via optoelectrical Sisyphus cooling [2] to temperatures ranging from 60 mK to 2 mK. We achieve Doppler-limited linewidths down to 3.8 kHz corresponding to an accuracy of 10⁻⁸. The lineshapes are in excellent agreement with theory taking into account the energy distribution of the molecules and the electric field distribution of the trap. These results show the feasibility of high precision spectroscopy in our experiment and open up the way to measurements with unprecedented precision for polyatomic molecules once applied to even colder ensembles.

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

[2] A. Prehn et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 063005 (2016).