SCIENCE - A 'Sisyphus' method for cooling trapped molecules

(Phys.org)—The investigation of ultracold molecules is of great interest for a number of problems. It could lead to a better understanding of chemical reactions in astrophysics. Ensembles of ultracold molecules could be used as quantum simulators, single molecules as quantum bits for storage of quantum information. Whereas efficient cooling methods have already been demonstrated for the cooling of atoms down to the nano-Kelvin regime, these methods fail for molecules due to their rich internal structure. A team of scientists in the Quantum Dynamics Division of Prof. Gerhard Rempe at the Max-Planck-Institute of Quantum Optics has now developed a cooling procedure – the so-called optoelectrical Sisyphus cooling – which for the first time offers the potential to reach these ultralow temperatures even for complex polyatomic molecules.

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