Laser cooling CaF in Durham: Zeeman Sisyphus deceleration & barricade tweezers

Building on the established work with ultracold atoms, cold molecules offer exciting possibilities for quantum simulation and tests of fundamental physics due to their more complicated internal energy structure and longer-range dipole interactions. Laser cooled molecules, compared to those associated from atoms, benefit from efficient imaging techniques as well as offering broader range of molecular species. However, the direct cooling of molecules also presents new experimental challenges, for instance the lower capture of molecular magneto-optical traps requiring efficient slowing techniques.

In this talk I will give a brief overview of laser-cooled molecules before presenting our work on building a (relatively) new Calcium Monofluoride (CaF) experiment. I'll discuss our attempt at implementing Zeeman-Sisyphus deceleration following [1]. Compared to conventional laser slowing, Zeeman-Sisyphus declaration is time independent, incorporates transverse guiding of the molecular beam and requires two orders of magnitude fewer photons to be scattered. Finally I'll discuss our proposed "barricade tweezer" technique to enhance the loading of optical tweezers of atoms or molecules [2].

[1] N.J. Fitch, and M. R. Tarbutt, ChemPhysChem 17, 22 (2016)