Ultracold molecular gases are promising as an avenue to rich many-body physics, quantum chemistry, quantum information, and precision measurements. This richness, which flows from the complex internal structure of molecules, makes the creation of ult
racold molecular gases using traditional methods (laser plus evaporative cooling) a challenge, in particular due to the spontaneous decay of molecules into dark states. We propose a way to circumvent this key bottleneck using an all-optical method for decelerating molecules using stimulated absorption and emission with a single ultrafast laser. We further describe single-photon cooling of the decelerating molecules that exploits their high dark state pumping rates, turning the principal obstacle to molecular laser cooling into an advantage. Cooling and deceleration may be applied simultaneously and continuously to load molecules into a trap. We discuss implementation details including multi-level numerical simulations of strontium monohydride (SrH). These techniques are applicable to a large number of molecular species and atoms with the only requirement being an electric dipole transition that can be accessed with an ultrafast laser.
We present the results of theoretical and experimental studies of dispersively coupled (or membrane in the middle) optomechanical systems. We calculate the linear optical properties of a high finesse cavity containing a thin dielectric membrane. We f
ocus on the cavitys transmission, reflection, and finesse as a function of the membranes position along the cavity axis and as a function of its optical loss. We compare these calculations with measurements and find excellent agreement in cavities with empty-cavity finesses in the range 10^4 to 10^5. The imaginary part of the membranes index of refraction is found to be approximately 10^(-4). We calculate the laser cooling performance of this system, with a particular focus on the less-intuitive regime in which photons tunnel through the membrane on a time scale comparable to the membranes period of oscillation. Lastly, we present calculations of quantum non-demolition measurements of the membranes phonon number in the low signal-to-noise regime where the phonon lifetime is comparable to the QND readout time.
