JILA Physicists Achieve Elusive ‘Evaporative Cooling’ of Molecules | NIST

JILA physicists have achieved “evaporative cooling” of hydroxyl molecules (OH) for the first time, marking a significant milestone in cooling molecules to extremely low temperatures. The team adapted the familiar evaporative cooling process used to cool atoms to create Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) in 1995. By using a new magnetic trap and carefully controlled electromagnetic pulses, they cooled about 1 million OH molecules from 50 milliKelvin to 5 milliKelvin in just 70 milliseconds. This breakthrough opens up new possibilities for studying ultracold chemistry, quantum simulations, and potentially even creating a BEC of reactive molecules. The research was funded by multiple government agencies and could have important implications for atmospheric and combustion science.

Source: https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2012/12/jila-physicists-achieve-elusive-evaporative-cooling-molecules

Keywords: Ultracold, Molecules, Evaporative cooling, Magnetic fields, Quantum regimes

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