Ultra-Cold Molecules

Research project P 14645 Ultra-cold molecules Laurentius WINDHOLZ 09.10.2000 Following the successful laser cooling and trapping of neutral atoms, culminating in achievement of Bose-Einstein condensation, the production of ultra-cold stable molecules as well as their trapping is a challenging task. This application is concerned with most of the recent questions on the way to a stable, dense cloud of diatomic molecules, generated from laser-cooled atomic ensembles. Our previous work is concerned with laser cooling and trapping of atoms and of photoassociation spectroscopy of sodium molecules in a magneto-optical trap (MOT). We are running the worldwide unique two-species MOT running with Li and Na simultaneously. Introducing time-of-flight ion detection it should be possible to increase the detection limits (compared with trap-loss detection performed now) and to reach the goal of photoassociative production of heteronuclear LiNa molecules. Such molecules are of special interest due to their permanent dipole moment in the ground state, being candidates for electrostatic trapping and manipulation. Besides this interest on heteronuclear molecules, generally possibilities of simultaneous trapping of atoms and molecules in a quasi-electrostatic trap (QUEST) will be studied. Of special interest is the possibility of producing and trapping of stable ultra-cold molecules in their electronic ground state, and the cooling of their internal degrees of freedom. A dense cloud of ultra-cold ground-state molecules would allow many applications in metrology, chemistry, matterwave interferometry and so on.