Nona Semana Integrada do Instituto de Física de São Carlos

Simulating a Zeeman slower for Rb2 molecules

Não agendado

20m

Doutorado

Palestrante

Manuel Lefran Torres ( Instituto de Física de São Carlos, Universidade de São Paulo)

Descrição

The development of cooling and trapping techniques for diatomic polar molecules is motivated by their wide range of potential applications, which are associated with their long-range dipole-dipole interaction and complex internal structure. Cold trapped polar molecules have also been proposed for quantum computation (1-2) as well as a simulator of strongly interacting quantum systems. (1,3) While such applications are all very exciting, the production of a cold and dense molecular sample is still very challenging. It would be very interesting if we could apply laser cooling technique directly into molecules. Unfortunately, until recently, laser cooling could not be applied directly to molecules because they generally do not possess suitable closed optical transitions, like in atomic systems. In this work, a theoretical study of the deceleration process of atoms and molecules was carried out using the Zeeman Slower technique. First, the results of simulations are presented to decelerate a beam of Rb atoms. Subsequently, a modification to the technique shown above for atoms is proposed to decelerate a supersonic beam of Rb2 molecules. Simulations were performed to decelerate the molecules using a theoretical magnetic field and a simulated magnetic field that represents an approximation of the field that we have in our laboratory. The results showed that it is feasible to decelerate a supersonic beam of Rb2 molecules in the laboratory with this new technique.

Referências

1 ANDRÉ, A. et al. A coherent all-electrical interface between polar molecules and mesoscopic superconducting resonators. Nature Physics, v. 2, p. 636-642, Sept. 2006. doi: 10.1038/nphys386.
2 DEMILLE, D. Quantum computation with trapped polar molecules. Physical Review Letters, v. 88, n. 6, p. 067901-1-067901-4, Jan. 2002.
3 MICHELI, A.; BRENNEN, G. K.; ZOLLER, P. A toolbox for lattice spin models with polar molecules. Nature Physics, v. 2, p. 341-347, 2006. doi: 10.1038/nphys287.