An optical centrifuge with zero rotational acceleration

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel optical centrifuge design that achieves zero or near-zero rotational acceleration, enabling new studies of molecular rotation in quantum environments like helium nanodroplets.

Contribution

The authors present a spectral focusing-based optical centrifuge capable of zero rotational acceleration, expanding the tools for probing molecular dynamics in quantum systems.

Findings

Achieved extremely low rotational accelerations including zero.

Demonstrated potential for studying molecular rotation in helium nanodroplets.

Proposed applications in quantum many-body system investigations.

Abstract

An optical centrifuge is a laser pulse which enables controlled rotational excitation of molecules. Centrifuged molecules rotating with well-defined angular frequencies are ideal candidates to probe many-body quantum systems at the nanoscale. Because the interaction with the quantum environment increases the effective moment of inertia of the embedded molecular probes, the required rotational acceleration of the optical centrifuge must be lowered to accommodate adiabatic spinning. We demonstrate a new design of an optical centrifuge, based on the method of spectral focusing, which enables extremely low, down to zero, rotational accelerations. We discuss the potential of using such constant frequency centrifuge to investigate molecular rotation inside helium nanodroplets.