Three-dimensional Magneto-optical Trapping of Barium Monofluoride

Abstract

As a heavy molecule, barium monofluoride (BaF) presents itself as a promising candidate for measuring permanent electric dipole moment. The precision of such measurements can be significantly enhanced by utilizing a cold molecular sample. Here we report the realization of three-dimensional magneto-optical trapping (MOT) of BaF molecules. Through the repumping of all the vibrational states up to $v=3$, and rotational states up to $N=3$, we effectively close the transition to a leakage level lower than $10^{-5}$. This approach enables molecules to scatter a sufficient number of photons required for laser cooling and trapping. By employing a technique that involves chirping the slowing laser frequency, BaF molecules are decelerated to near-zero velocity, resulting in the capture of approximately $3\times 10^3$ molecules in a dual-frequency MOT setup. Our findings represent a significant step towards the realization of ultracold BaF molecules and the conduct of precision measurements with cold molecules.

5 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (29)

• Magneto-optical trapping of a diatomic molecule
• Resolving the gravitational redshift within a millimeter atomic sample
• A new bound on the electron's electric dipole moment
• Precision Measurement of Time-Reversal Symmetry Violation with Laser-Cooled Polyatomic Molecules
• Radio Frequency Magneto-Optical Trapping of CaF with High Density
• Using Molecules to Measure Nuclear Spin-Dependent Parity Violation
• Magneto-Optical Trapping and Sub-Doppler Cooling of a Polyatomic Molecule
• On-Demand Entanglement of Molecules in a Reconfigurable Optical Tweezer Array
• Prospects for an electron electric dipole moment search in metastable ThO and ThF${}^{+}$
• Rotational state microwave mixing for laser cooling of complex diatomic molecules
• Quantum state manipulation and cooling of ultracold molecules
• High accuracy theoretical investigations of CaF, SrF, and BaF and implications for laser-cooling
• High Phase-Space Density of Laser-Cooled Molecules in an Optical Lattice
• Structures, Branching Ratios and Laser Cooling Scheme for 138BaF Molecule
• Functionalizing Aromatic Compounds with Optical Cycling Centers
• Blue-Detuned Magneto-Optical Trap of Molecules
• Radiative deflection of a BaF molecular beam from the optical cycling
• Cold collision and high-resolution spectroscopy of buffer gas cooled BaF Molecule
• Optical Trapping of a Polyatomic Molecule in an $\ell$-Type Parity Doublet State
• Doppler cooling of buffer-gas-cooled Barium monofluoride molecules
• High density loading and collisional loss of laser cooled molecules in an optical trap
• Characterizing the Fundamental Bending Vibration of a Linear Polyatomic Molecule for Symmetry Violation Searches
• Benchmarking of the Fock space coupled cluster method and uncertainty estimation: Magnetic hyperfine interaction in the excited state of BaF
• A Blue-Detuned Magneto-Optical Trap of CaF Molecules
• Absorption spectroscopy for laser cooling and high-fidelity detection of barium monofluoride molecules
• Saturated absorption spectroscopy of buffer-gas-cooled Barium monofluoride molecules
• Optical cycling in polyatomic molecules with complex hyperfine structure
• Using parity-nonconserving spin-spin coupling to measure the Tl nuclear anapole moment in a TlF molecular beam
• Laser cooling of a fermionic molecule

Cited by in corpus (21)

• Magneto-optical trapping of a heavy polyatomic molecule for precision measurement
• Magneto-optical trapping of aluminum monofluoride
• Prospects for measuring the electron's electric dipole moment with polyatomic molecules in an optical lattice
• Isotopologue-selective laser cooling of molecules
• Laser cooled 137BaF molecules for measuring nuclear-spin-dependent parity violation
• Ultracold Interactions between Ions and Polar Molecules
• Molecular laser cooling using serrodynes: Implementation, characterization and prospects
• Magnetic hyperfine structure constants of ${}^{137}$BaF in the ${}^2{\Pi }_{1/2}$ and ${}^2{\Pi }_{3/2}$ excited states
• High-resolution spectroscopy of barium monofluoride: Odd isotopologues, hyperfine structure and isotope shifts
• DiPolMol-Py: A Python package for calculations for ${}^2\Sigma$ ground-state molecules
• Magneto-Optical Trapping of a Metal Hydride Molecule
• Slowing YbF molecules using radiation pressure
• Global isotopic analysis of hyperfine-resolved rotational spectroscopic data for barium monofluoride, BaF
• Single-photon loading of polar molecules into an optical trap
• Simulated Laser Cooling and Magneto-Optical Trapping of Group IV Atoms
• Suppressing Degradation in Quantum Batteries by Electromagnetically-induced Transparency
• Parity-Doublet Coherence Times in Optically Trapped Polyatomic Molecules
• Optical pumping and laser slowing of a heavy molecule
• Narrowline Laser Cooling and Spectroscopy of Molecules via Stark States
• High-sensitivity molecular spectroscopy of SrOH using magneto-optical trapping
• Spin interferometry in a beam of ultracold molecules