Laser-coolable polyatomic molecules with heavy nuclei

T. A. Isaev*, A. V. Zaitsevskii, E. Eliav

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

70 Scopus citations

Abstract

Recently, a few diatomic and polyatomic molecules have been identified as prospective systems for Doppler/Sisyphus cooling. Doppler/Sisyphus cooling allows us to decrease the kinetic energy of molecules down to μK temperatures with high efficiency and allows their capture in molecular traps, including magneto-optical traps. Trapped molecules can be used for creating molecular fountains and/or performing controlled chemical reactions, high-precision spectra measurements, and a wealth of other applications. Polyatomic molecules with heavy nuclei are of considerable interest for the 'new physics' search outside of the Standard Model and other applications including cold chemistry and photochemistry, quantum informatics, etc. Here, we focus on the radium monohydroxide molecule (RaOH), which is on the one hand amenable to laser cooling and on the other hand opens excellent possibilities for -odd and -odd effects research. At present, RaOH is the heaviest polyatomic molecule proposed for direct cooling with lasers.

Original languageEnglish
Article number225101
JournalJournal of Physics B: Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics
Volume50
Issue number22
DOIs
StatePublished - 30 Oct 2017

Funding

FundersFunder number
Center for Scientific Computing
Russian Foundation for Basic Research16-03-00766, 16-02-01064

    Keywords

    • electronic structure
    • laser cooling
    • parity violation
    • spinorbit interaction
    • transition moments

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