Abstract

Although there has been stunning progress in the production of ultracold atoms (defined loosely as atoms with T < 1 mK), efforts to produce translationally ultracold molecules were unsuccessful until very recently. Conventional laser cooling of atoms relies on the existence of a “cycling” transition, generally not an option in molecules because of their rotational and vibrational multiplicity. Various proposals have been offered to overcome this difficulty, including ultracold molecule production by photoassociation (PA) of ultracold atoms,¹ buffer gas cooling,² and cooling by a multiple-frequency laser.³ The first and second of these approaches have now been demonstrated successfully. This talk will describe some of these new experimental results, focusing particularly on our work at the University of Connecticut on ultracold K₂ molecules.

© 1999 Optical Society of America