Laser cooling with adiabatic passage for diatomic molecules

• Main Authors: Liang, Qian, Chen, Tao, Bu, Wenhao, Zhang, Yuhe, Yan, Bo
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 13.02.2019
• Subjects: Physics - Atomic Physics
• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.1902.05212

We present a magnetically enhanced laser cooling scheme applicable to multi-level type-II transitions and further diatomic molecules with adiabatic transfer. An angled magnetic field is introduced to not only remix the dark states, but also decompose the multi-level system into several two-level sub-systems in time-ordering, hence allowing multiple photon momentum transfer. For complex multi-level diatomic molecules, although the enhancement gets weakened, our simulations still predict a $\sim 4\times$ larger value of the maximum achievable cooling force and a wider coolable velocity range compared to the conventional Doppler cooling. A reduced dependence on spontaneous emission of this scheme makes laser cooling a molecule with leakage channels become a feasibility.