Magneto-Optical Trap for Polar Molecules

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel laser cooling and trapping method for polar molecules, specifically TiO, using pulsed electric fields to enable a magneto-optical trap based on a quasi-cycling transition, demonstrated through simulations.

Contribution

It presents a new electrostatically remixed MOT technique for polar molecules, expanding laser cooling methods to molecules like TiO.

Findings

TiO can be cooled to 10 μK in the proposed MOT.

The electrostatically remixed MOT can trap TiO with an 80 ms lifetime.

Simulations confirm the feasibility of the method.

Abstract

We propose a method for laser cooling and trapping a substantial class of polar molecules, and in particular titanium (II) oxide (TiO). This method uses pulsed electric fields to nonadiabatically remix the ground-state magnetic sublevels of the molecule, allowing us to build a magneto-optical trap (MOT) based on a quasi-cycling $J'=J"-1$ transition. Monte-Carlo simulations of this electrostatically remixed MOT (ER-MOT) demonstrate the feasibility of cooling TiO to a temperature of 10 $\mathrm{\mu}K$ and trapping it with a radiation-pumping-limited lifetime on the order of 80 ms.