Sympathetic rotational cooling of large trapped molecular ions

2025/06/25 by M. Leibscher, Blech, Alexander, Leibscher, Monika +1
Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Frequency and Time Standards #Atomic Physics (physics.atom-ph) #Atomic and Subatomic Physics Research #Chemical Physics (physics.chem-ph) #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #FOS: Physical sciences #Quantum Physics (quant-ph)

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2506.20846

openalex publication_date 2025/06/25 · openalex created_date 2025/10/15 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30

Abstract

We suggest a protocol for the sympathetic cooling of a molecular asymmetric top rotor co-trapped with laser-cooled atomic ions, based on resonant coupling between the molecular ion's electric dipole moment and a common normal mode of the trapped particles. By combining sympathetic sideband laser cooling with coherent microwave excitation, we demonstrate the efficient depopulation of arbitrary rotational subspaces and the ability to cool an incoherent distribution of rotational states into a single, well-defined quantum state. This capability opens the door to exploiting the rotational Hilbert space for applications in quantum information processing and high-precision spectroscopy.

Citations

• A planar rotor trapped and coupled to the vibrational modes of an ion crystal
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Related

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• A planar rotor trapped and coupled to the vibrational modes of an ion crystal