2025/12/26 by Jinyu Dai, Dai, Jinyu, Benjamin C. Riley +7
Physics and Astronomy · #Atomic Physics (physics.atom-ph) #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #FOS: Physical sciences #Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas) #Quantum Mechanics and Non-Hermitian Physics #Quantum Physics (quant-ph) #Quantum chaos and dynamical systems
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2512.22350
openalex publication_date 2025/12/26 · openalex created_date 2025/12/31 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We demonstrate a three-dimensional magneto-optical trap (MOT) of a metal hydride molecule, CaH. We are able to scatter ∼104 photons with vibrational loss covered up to vibrational quantum number ν=2. This allows us to laser slow the molecular beam near zero velocity with a "white-light" technique and subsequently load it into a radio-frequency MOT. The MOT contains 230(40) molecules, limited by beam source characteristics and predissociative loss of CaH. The temperature of the MOT is below one millikelvin. The predissociative loss mechanism could, in turn, facilitate controlled dissociation of the molecule, offering a possible route to optical trapping of hydrogen atoms for precision spectroscopy.