Cooling of a Zero-Nuclear-Spin Molecular Ion to a Selected Rotational State

We demonstrate rotational cooling of the silicon monoxide cation via optical pumping by a spectrally filtered broadband laser. Compared with diatomic hydrides, SiO\+ is more challenging to cool because of its smaller rotational interval. However, the rotational level spacing and large dipole moment...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2020-07
Main Authors: Stollenwerk, Patrick R, Antonov, Ivan O, Venkataramanababu, Sruthi, Yen-Wei, Lin, Odom, Brian C
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Broadband
Cooling
Data processing
Dipole moments
Hyperfine structure
Microwaves
Molecular ions
Optical pumping
Population distribution
Quantum phenomena
Rotational spectra
Rotational states
Silicon
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Summary:We demonstrate rotational cooling of the silicon monoxide cation via optical pumping by a spectrally filtered broadband laser. Compared with diatomic hydrides, SiO\+ is more challenging to cool because of its smaller rotational interval. However, the rotational level spacing and large dipole moment of SiO\+ allows direct manipulation by microwaves, and the absence of hyperfine structure in its dominant isotopologue greatly reduces demands for pure quantum state preparation. These features make \(^{28}\)Si\(^{16}\)O\+ a good candidate for future applications such as quantum information processing. Cooling to the ground rotational state is achieved on a 100 ms time scale and attains a population of 94(3)\%, with an equivalent temperature \(T=0.53(6)\) K. We also describe a novel spectral-filtering approach to cool into arbitrary rotational states and use it to demonstrate a narrow rotational population distribution (\(N\pm1\)) around a selected state.
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.2005.06638