Ultracold hydrogen atoms: a versatile coolant to produce ultracold molecules

Abstract

We show theoretically that ultracold hydrogen atoms have very favorable properties for sympathetic cooling of molecules to microkelvin temperatures. We calculate the potential energy surfaces for spin-polarized interactions of H atoms with the prototype molecules NH(triplet-Sigma-) and OH(doublet-Pi) and show that they are shallow (50 to 80 cm-1) and only weakly anisotropic. We carry out quantum collision calculations on H+NH and H+OH and show that the ratio of elastic to inelastic cross sections is high enough to allow sympathetic cooling from temperatures well over 1 K for NH and around 250 mK for OH.

6 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (15)

• A High Phase-Space-Density Gas of Polar Molecules
• Ultracold Molecules in the Ro-Vibrational Triplet Ground State
• Sisyphus Cooling of Electrically Trapped Polyatomic Molecules
• Magneto-electrostatic trapping of ground state OH molecules
• Magnetic trapping and Zeeman relaxation of imidogen (NH X-triplet-Sigma)
• Molecule formation in ultracold atomic gases
• Low-energy molecular collisions in a permanent magnetic trap
• Continuous loading of an electrostatic trap for polar molecules
• The prospects of forming ultracold molecules in ${}^2\Sigma$ states by magnetoassociation of alkali-metal atoms with Yb
• Electrostatic trapping of metastable NH molecules
• Large Effects of Electric Fields on Atom-Molecule Collisions at Millikelvin Temperatures
• Quantum reactive scattering of ultracold NH($X{}^3{\Sigma }^{-}$) radicals in a magnetic trap
• Cold collisions of N atoms and NH molecules in magnetic fields
• Sympathetic cooling of polyatomic molecules with S-state atoms in a magnetic trap
• Stark deceleration of OH radicals in low-field-seeking and high-field-seeking quantum states

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Collisional Cooling of Ultracold Molecules
• Gaussian Process Model for Collision Dynamics of Complex Molecules
• Modeling sympathetic cooling of molecules by ultracold atoms
• Accurate Determination of the Dynamical Polarizability of Dysprosium
• Atom-molecule collisions, spin relaxation, and sympathetic cooling in an ultracold spin-polarized Rb(${}^2\mathrm{S}$)-SrF${(}^2{\Sigma }^{+})$ mixture
• Universal probability distributions of scattering observables in ultracold molecular collisions
• Molecular Collisions: from Near-cold to Ultra-cold
• Cold collisions of heavy ${}^2\Sigma$ molecules with alkali-metal atoms in a magnetic field: Ab initio analysis and prospects for sympathetic cooling of SrOH${(}^2\Sigma )$ by Li(${}^2$S)
• Sympathetic cooling of fluorine atoms with ultracold atomic hydrogen
• Effects of Conical Intersections on Hyperfine Quenching of Hydroxyl OH in collision with an ultracold Sr atom