Implementation of a single femtosecond optical frequency comb for rovibrational cooling

Abstract

We show that a single femtosecond optical frequency comb may be used to induce two-photon transitions between molecular vibrational levels to form ultracold molecules, e.g., KRb. The phase across an individual pulse in the pulse train is sinusoidally modulated with a carefully chosen modulation amplitude and frequency. Piecewise adiabatic population transfer is fulfilled to the final state by each pulse in the applied pulse train providing a controlled population accumulation in the final state. Detuning the pulse train carrier and modulation frequency from one-photon resonances changes the time scale of molecular dynamics but leads to the same complete population transfer to the ultracold state. A standard optical frequency comb with no modulation is shown to induce similar dynamics leading to rovibrational cooling.

14 pages, 7 figures

References in corpus (8)

• A High Phase-Space-Density Gas of Polar Molecules
• Production of cold molecules via magnetically tunable Feshbach resonances
• Collisional stability of fermionic Feshbach molecules
• Heteronuclear molecules in an optical dipole trap
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Cited by in corpus (4)

• Cooling molecular vibrations with shaped laser pulses: Optimal control theory exploiting the timescale separation between coherent excitation and spontaneous emission
• Optical pulse-shaping for internal cooling of molecules
• The dynamics of three-level $\Lambda$-type system driven by the trains of ultrashort laser pulses
• Impact of Decoherence on Internal State Cooling using Optical Frequency Combs