Laser cooling of a diatomic molecule

Understand

It has been roughly three decades since laser cooling techniques produced ultracold atoms, leading to rapid advances in a vast array of fields.

• Unfortunately laser cooling has not yet been extended to molecules because of their complex internal structure.
• However, this complexity makes molecules potentially useful for many applications.
• For example, heteronuclear molecules possess permanent electric dipole moments which lead to long-range, tunable, anisotropic dipole-dipole interactions.