Optical Trapping of a Polyatomic Molecule in an <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:mo>ℓ</mml:mo></mml:math>-Type Parity Doublet State
Christian Hallas, Nathaniel B. Vilas, Loïc Anderegg, Paige Robichaud, Andrew Winnicki, Chaoqun Zhang, Lan Cheng, John M. Doyle
Abstract
We report optical trapping of a polyatomic molecule, calcium monohydroxide (CaOH). CaOH molecules from a magneto-optical trap are sub-Doppler laser cooled to $20(3)\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{\ensuremath{\mu}}\mathrm{K}$ in free space and loaded into an optical dipole trap. We attain an in-trap molecule number density of $3(1)\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{9}\text{ }\text{ }{\mathrm{cm}}^{\ensuremath{-}3}$ at a temperature of $57(8)\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{\ensuremath{\mu}}\mathrm{K}$. Trapped CaOH molecules are optically pumped into an excited vibrational bending mode, whose $\ensuremath{\ell}$-type parity doublet structure is a potential resource for a wide range of proposed quantum science applications with polyatomic molecules. We measure the spontaneous, radiative lifetime of this bending mode state to be $\ensuremath{\sim}0.7\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{s}$.