Optomechanics with molecules in a strongly pumped ring cavity

Understand

Cavity cooling of an atom works best on a cyclic optical transition in the strong coupling regime near resonance, where small cavity photon numbers suffice for trapping and cooling.

• Due to the absence of closed transitions a straightforward application to molecules fails: optical pumping can lead the particle into uncoupled states.
• An alternative operation in the far off-resonant regime generates only very slow cooling due to the reduced field-molecule coupling.
• We predict to overcome this by using a strongly driven ring-cavity operated in the sideband cooling regime.