Λ-Enhanced Imaging of Molecules in an Optical Trap

Lawrence W Cheuk; Loïc Anderegg; Benjamin L Augenbraun; Yicheng Bao; Sean Burchesky; Wolfgang Ketterle; John M Doyle

doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.083201

Λ-Enhanced Imaging of Molecules in an Optical Trap

Phys Rev Lett. 2018 Aug 24;121(8):083201. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.083201.

Authors

Lawrence W Cheuk^{1

2}, Loïc Anderegg^{1

2}, Benjamin L Augenbraun^{1

2}, Yicheng Bao^{1

2}, Sean Burchesky^{1

2}, Wolfgang Ketterle^{2

3}, John M Doyle^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA.
² Harvard-MIT Center for Ultracold Atoms, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA.
³ Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.

PMID: 30192609
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.083201

Abstract

We report on nondestructive imaging of optically trapped calcium monofluoride molecules using in situ Λ-enhanced gray molasses cooling. 200 times more fluorescence is obtained compared to destructive on-resonance imaging, and the trapped molecules remain at a temperature of 20 μK. The achieved number of scattered photons makes possible nondestructive single-shot detection of single molecules with high fidelity.