Towards improved loading, cooling, and trapping of molecules in magneto-optical traps

Abstract

Recent experiments have demonstrated direct cooling and trapping of diatomic and triatomic molecules in magneto-optical traps (MOTs). However, even the best molecular MOTs to date still have density $10^{-5}$ times smaller than in typical atomic MOTs. The main limiting factors are: (i) inefficiencies in slowing molecules to velocities low enough to be captured by the MOT, (ii) low MOT capture velocities, and (iii) limits on density within the MOT resulting from sub-Doppler heating~[J. A. Devlin and M. R. Tarbutt, Phys. Rev. A \textbf{90}, 063415 (2018)]. All of these are consequences of the need to drive `Type-II' optical cycling transitions, where dark states appear in Zeeman sublevels, in order to avoid rotational branching. We present simulations demonstrating ways to mitigate each of these limitations. This should pave the way towards loading molecules into conservative traps with sufficiently high density and number to evaporatively cool them to quantum degeneracy.

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Cited by in corpus (10)

• Quantum state manipulation and cooling of ultracold molecules
• High density loading and collisional loss of laser cooled molecules in an optical trap
• Magneto-optical trapping of a heavy polyatomic molecule for precision measurement
• A Blue-Detuned Magneto-Optical Trap of CaF Molecules
• Sympathetic cooling and slowing of molecules with Rydberg atoms
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• Spectroscopy of laser cooling transitions in MgF
• Ultracold molecular collisions in magnetic fields: Efficient incorporation of hyperfine structure in the total rotational angular momentum representation
• Slowing YbF molecules using radiation pressure
• Simulated Laser Cooling and Magneto-Optical Trapping of Group IV Atoms