Deceleration of molecules in a supersonic beam by the optical field in a low-finesse cavity

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that a low-finesse optical cavity can effectively decelerate and trap molecules from a supersonic beam using cavity-induced optical fields, offering a new method for molecular control.

Contribution

It introduces a novel cavity-based technique for molecular deceleration and trapping, leveraging cavity dynamics for rapid optical field switching.

Findings

Most molecules can be decelerated to zero velocity.

Approximately 1% of molecules can be trapped at millikelvin temperatures.

Cavity-induced dynamics enable automatic optical field switching.

Abstract

We study the dynamics of a supersonic molecular beam in a low-finesse optical cavity and demonstrate that most molecules in the beam can be decelerated to zero central velocity by the intracavity optical field in a process analogous to electrostatic Stark deceleration. We show that the rapid switching of the optical field for slowing the molecules is automatically generated by the cavity-induced dynamics. We further show that $\sim1\%$ of the molecules can be optically trapped at a few millikelvin in the same cavity.