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Updated: Jun 14, 2026

Direct Imaging of Laser-driven Ultrafast Molecular Rotation
Published on: February 4, 2017
Radiative force from optical cycling on a diatomic molecule
E S Shuman1, J F Barry, D R Glenn
1Department of Physics, Yale University, P.O. Box 208120, New Haven, Connecticut 06520, USA.
Abstract:
We demonstrate a scheme for optical cycling in the polar, diatomic molecule strontium monofluoride (SrF) using the X2Sigma+ --> A2Pi(1/2) electronic transition. SrF's highly diagonal Franck-Condon factors suppress vibrational branching. We eliminate rotational branching by employing a quasicycling N = 1 --> N' = 0 type transition in conjunction with magnetic field remixing of dark Zeeman sublevels. We observe cycling fluorescence and deflection through radiative force of an SrF molecular beam using this scheme. With straightforward improvements our scheme promises to allow more than 10(5) photon scatters, possibly enabling the direct laser cooling of SrF.
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