Controlled Molecular Ensembles at Cold and Ultracold Temperatures

DIPC Seminars

Speaker

Dr. Martin Zeppenfeld. Max-Planck Institut fuer Quantenoptik, Garching

When

2016/06/24
14:00

Place

Donostia International Physics Center. Pº Manuel Lardizabal 4, Donostia - San Sebastián

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Due to their strong long-range dipole-dipole interactions and large number of internal states, polar molecules cooled to cold and ultracold temperatures enable fascinating applications. Thus, precision measurements on molecules might provide evidence for physics beyond the standard model, and a quantum degenerate molecular gas would allow the investigation of new quantum phases of matter. However, gaining and maintaining control of the motional and internal degrees of freedom of polar molecules is a formidable challenge. In my talk, I will present our multifaceted efforts to tame polar molecules. On the one hand, buffer gas cooling is a general technique to produce motionally and internally cold beams of molecules. Combining our buffer gas source with a centrifuge decelerator has allowed us to produce intense beams of molecules at near-zero velocity. On the other hand, optoelectrical Sisyphus cooling has allowed us to cool molecules over many orders of magnitude to sub- millikelvin temperatures. We thereby obtain 300,000 formaldehyde molecules at a temperature of about 400uK. Our experiments provide an excellent starting point to investigate cold and ultracold collisions, perform precision spectroscopy, and investigate sympathetic or evaporative cooling.