Laser cooling of internal degrees of freedom of molecules by dynamically trapped states

Abstract

In the last several years we have discovered a variety of remarkable pulse strategies for manipulating molecular motion by employing a design strategy we call “local optimization.'' Here we review the concept of local optimization and contrast it with optimal control theory. By way of background, we give highlights from two recent examples of the method: (1) a strategy for eliminating population transfer to one or many excited electronic states during strong field excitation, an effect we call ‘optical paralysis’; (2) a generalization of the counterintuitive STIRAP (stimulated Raman adiabatic passage) pulse sequence from three levels to N levels, a strategy we call ‘straddling STIRAP.' We then turn to a third example, which is the main subject of this paper: laser cooling of molecular internal degrees of freedom. We study a model that includes both coherent interaction with the radiation field and spontaneous emission; the latter is necessary to carry away the entropy from the molecule. An optimal control calculation was performed first and succeeded in producing vibrational cooling, but the resulting pulse sequence was difficult to interpret. Local optimization subsequently revealed the cooling mechanism: the instantaneous phase of the laser is locked to the phase of the transition dipole moment between the excited state amplitude and v=0 of the ground state. Thus, the molecules that reach v=0 by spontaneous emission become decoupled from the field, and no longer absorb, while molecules in all other states are continually repumped. The mechanism could be called “vibrationally selective coherent population trapping,'' in analogy to the corresponding mechanism of velocity selective coherent population trapping in atoms for sub-Doppler cooling of translations.