Department of Physics and Astronomy, University College London, Gower Street, London, UK WC1E 6BT.
Faraday Discuss. 2009;142:175-90; discussion 221-55. doi: 10.1039/b819079h.
We propose a general scheme for sympathetic cooling of molecules to microK temperatures on a timescale of seconds. Experimental parameters have been estimated from theory, which indicate the viability of the scheme. This method, which is particularly suited to optical Stark deceleration, utilises ultracold, laser cooled metastable rare gas atoms quenched to their ground state as collision partners to co-trapped molecular species within a deep optical trap (150 mK). We also describe the measurement of the role of laser-induced molecular alignment on the dipole force in optical Stark deceleration and outline progress towards the realisation of chirped optical Stark deceleration for producing slow molecular beams with mK energy spreads.
我们提出了一种将分子冷却到微开尔文温度的通用方案，时间尺度为秒。实验参数已根据理论进行了估计，这表明该方案具有可行性。这种方法特别适用于光斯塔克减速，利用超冷、激光冷却的亚稳态稀有气体原子将其猝灭到基态，作为深光阱（150mK）内共捕获分子物种的碰撞伙伴。我们还描述了测量激光诱导分子取向对光斯塔克减速中偶极力的作用，并概述了在实现啁啾光斯塔克减速方面的进展，以产生具有微开尔文能量扩散的慢分子束。
