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Updated: Mar 13, 2026

Cooling an Optically Trapped Ultracold Fermi Gas by Periodical Driving
Published on: March 30, 2017
Proposal for Laser Cooling of Complex Polyatomic Molecules
Ivan Kozyryev1,2, Louis Baum1,2, Kyle Matsuda1,2
1Harvard-MIT Center for Ultracold Atoms, Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA.
Abstract:
An experimentally feasible strategy for direct laser cooling of polyatomic molecules with six or more atoms is presented. Our approach relies on the attachment of a metal atom to a complex molecule, where it acts as an active photon cycling site. We describe a laser cooling scheme for alkaline earth monoalkoxide free radicals taking advantage of the phase space compression of a cryogenic buffer-gas beam. Possible applications are presented including laser cooling of chiral molecules and slowing of molecular beams using coherent photon processes.
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