Quantum state preparation and control of single molecular ions

Abstract

Preparing molecules at rest and in a highly pure quantum state is a long standing dream in chemistry and physics, so far achieved only for a select set of molecules in dedicated experimental setups. Here, a quantum-limited combination of mass spectrometry and Raman spectroscopy is proposed that should be applicable to a wide range of molecular ions. Excitation of electrons in the molecule followed by uncontrolled decay and branching into several lower energy states is avoided. Instead, the molecule is always connected to rotational states within the electronic and vibrational ground-state manifold, while a co-trapped atomic ion provides efficient entropy removal and allows for extraction of information on the molecule. The outlined techniques might enable preparation, manipulation and measurement of a large multitude of molecular ion species with the same instrument, with applications including, but not limited to, precise determination of molecular properties and fundamental tests of physics.

12 pages, 2 figures, reformatted for resubmission

References in corpus (8)

• A High Phase-Space-Density Gas of Polar Molecules
• Laser cooling of a diatomic molecule
• Quantum Gas of Deeply Bound Ground State Molecules
• Ultracold Molecules in the Ro-Vibrational Triplet Ground State
• Precise Control of Molecular Dynamics with a Femtosecond Frequency Comb - A Weak Field Route to Strong Field Coherent Control
• A new method for producing ultracold molecular ions
• Piecewise adiabatic population transfer in a molecule via a wave packet
• Molecular heat pump for rotational states

Cited by in corpus (30)

• Preparation and coherent manipulation of pure quantum states of a single molecular ion
• Non-destructive state detection for quantum logic spectroscopy of molecular ions
• Parameter Concentration in Quantum Approximate Optimization
• Sub-Doppler Cooling and Compressed Trapping of YO Molecules at $\mu$K Temperatures
• Quantum entanglement between an atom and a molecule
• Entanglement-enhanced detection of single-photon scattering events
• Precision frequency-comb terahertz spectroscopy on pure quantum states of a single molecular ion
• Dissipative quantum control of a spin chain
• Single-ion, transportable optical atomic clocks
• Direct frequency-comb-driven Raman transitions in the terahertz range
• Quantum logic for control and manipulation of molecular ions using a frequency comb
• A Method for Preparation and Readout of Polyatomic Molecules in Single Quantum States
• Identification of molecular quantum states using phase-sensitive forces
• Two-photon vibrational transitions in ${\mathrm{O}}_2^{+}$ as probes of variation of the proton-to-electron mass ratio
• Vibrational quenching and reactive processes of weakly bound molecular ion-atom collisions at cold temperatures
• Microwave control of trapped-ion motion assisted by a running optical lattice
• Microwave quantum logic spectroscopy and control of molecular ions
• State-selective coherent motional excitation as a new approach for the manipulation, spectroscopy and state-to-state chemistry of single molecular ions
• Optical Pumping of TeH+: Implications for the Search for Varying mp/me
• Resonant Few-Photon Excitation of a Single-Ion Oscillator
• Prospect for precision quantum logic spectroscopy of vibrational overtone transitions in molecular oxygen ions
• Rotational dynamics of a diatomic molecular ion in a Paul trap
• Molecular quantum rotors in gyroscopic motion with a nonspreading rotational wavepacket
• Zeeman-Splitting-Assisted Quantum Logic Spectroscopy of Trapped Ions
• Quantum Computation with Rotational States of Nonpolar Ionic Molecules
• Vibrational ladder-descending photostabilization of a weakly bound molecule: Quantum optimal control with a genetic algorithm
• Ultrafast infrared spectroscopy with single molecular ions
• Phase Stabilization of a Frequency Comb using Multipulse Quantum Interferometry
• Molecular Quantum Control Algorithm Design by Reinforcement Learning
• Quantum stability of an ion in a Paul trap revisited