Abstract

A new way to reach the Lamb-Dicke regime in molecular gases has been reported in [1]. This is achieved by trapping H₂ molecule during Stimulated Raman Scattering (SRS) in a photonic band gap hollow-core fiber (PBG HC-PCF) pumped with a high power CW laser [1]. The molecular trapping process occurs in a self-assembled manner, whereby the Raman active molecules are confined in nanometer-wide sections by a periodic and ultra-deep potential thanks to a spatially modulated Raman saturation. It has permitted to obtain sub-recoil linewidths as low as 14 kHz which is 5 orders of magnitude lower than the expected H₂ Doppler-broadened linewidth for a product of the input power and the pressure below 1000 W.bar. Above this threshold the linewidth broadens due to the generation of the second-order Stokes.

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