Laser-cooling and Ultracold Collisions of YO Molecules

Laser-cooling of highly polar YO molecules has achieved exciting progress for future degenerate gas studies. In recent work, we have demonstrated the first sub-Doppler molecular MOT, and efficient cooling and loading into a crossed dipole trap. In the optical trap, we performed the first collisional studies of laser-cooled molecules in the single partial wave regime. Additionally, we have demonstrated the first narrowline laser cooling of a molecule using a novel scheme employing small electric fields to polarize the molecules in a metastable state. This scheme removes sensitivity to background electric fields and creates a quasi-closed laser-cooling cycle on a narrow molecular transition. With these tools, evaporative cooling will be performed next to create a degenerate gas. Using metastable states present in YO molecules, a fully controllable degenerate dipolar gas can be manipulated with electric field strengths five orders of magnitude smaller than current molecular systems."