2016/09/08 by Ivan Kozyryev, Louis Baum, Kyle Matsuda +5 · 3 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Atomic and Subatomic Physics Research #Atomic physics #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Excited state #Laser #Laser cooling #Materials science #Molecule #Optics #Physics #Polyatomic ion #Quantum mechanics #Strong Light-Matter Interactions #Triatomic molecule #physics.atom-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.118.173201
published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 173201 (2017)
arxiv created 2016/09/08 · openalex publication_date 2017/04/24 · arxiv updated 2017/05/03 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We perform magnetically assisted Sisyphus laser cooling of the triatomic free radical strontium monohydroxide (SrOH). This is achieved with principal optical cycling in the rotationally closed P(N''=1) branch of either the X[over ˜]2Σ+(000)↔A[over ˜]2Π1/2(000) or the X[over ˜]2Σ+(000)↔B[over ˜]2Σ+(000) vibronic transitions. Molecules lost into the excited vibrational states during the cooling process are repumped back through the B[over ˜](000) state for both the (100) level of the Sr-O stretching mode and the (0200) level of the bending mode. The transverse temperature of a SrOH molecular beam is reduced in one dimension by 2 orders of magnitude to ∼750 μK. This approach opens a path towards creating a variety of ultracold polyatomic molecules by means of direct laser cooling.