Journal
PHYSICAL REVIEW X
Volume 10, Issue 2, Pages -Publisher
AMER PHYSICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevX.10.021049
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Funding
- National Research Council postdoctoral fellowship
- ARO-MURI
- NIST
- NSF [PHY-1734006]
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Complex molecular structure demands customized solutions to laser cooling by extending its general set of principles and practices. Compared with other laser-cooled molecules, yttrium monoxide (YO) exhibits a large electron-nucleus interaction, resulting in a dominant hyperfine interaction over the electron spin-rotation coupling. The YO ground state is thus comprised of two manifolds of closely spaced states, with one of them possessing a negligible Lande g factor. This unique energy level structure favors dual-frequency dc magneto-optical trapping (MOT) and gray molasses cooling (GMC). We report exceptionally robust cooling of YO at 4 mu K over a wide range of laser intensity, detunings (one- and two-photon), and magnetic field. The magnetic insensitivity enables the spatial compression of the molecular cloud by alternating GMC and MOT under the continuous operation of the quadrupole magnetic field. A combination of these techniques produces a laser-cooled molecular sample with the highest phase space density in free space.
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