Speaker
Description
Aluminium monofluoride (AlF) offers unique opportunities for direct laser cooling of molecules. The closed shell structure of the electronic ground state results in a chemically stable and deeply bound molecule. The A$^1\Pi\leftarrow$ X$^1\Sigma^+$ laser cooling transition is extremely strong, highly vibrationally diagonal and in the deep ultraviolet, allowing efficient and rapid optical cycling and the generation of large radiation pressure forces. In addition, the spin-singlet nature of the ground and excited states means that all Q$(J)$-lines are rotationally closed, in contrast to the spin-doublet molecules laser cooled thus far [1,2].
We demonstrate the benefits of these molecular properties in experiments, both by producing the molecules with high efficiency, and with the first experiments laser cooling AlF. We generate AlF in a pulsed cryogenic buffer gas source with more than $10^{12}$ molecules per steradian per shot, and utilise the reaction between Al and AlF$_3$ to generate a continuous thermal AlF beam with a total brightness of $6\times10^{14}$ molecules per steradian per second. These molecular beams are then subsequently laser cooled in one dimension with blue-detuned optical molasses, an important step towards magneto-optical trapping.
[1] S. Hofsäss et al., New J. Phys. 23 075001 (2021).
[2] S. Truppe et al., Phys. Rev. A 100 052513 (2019).
| Abstract Number (department-wise) | MP 15 |
|---|---|
| Department | MP (Meijer) |
