Peter Rabl
Harvard/ITAMP
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
2:00 pm in SPL 52
Coherent and incoherent manipulations of polar molecules on chips
Abstract: Polar molecules combine the exceptional features of a large electric dipole moment and long-lived rotational states with level splittings in the GHz regime. When placed close above the surface of a chip this combination allows manipulations of polar molecules with electric fields and enables strong interactions between molecules and solid state devices, e.g., superconducting microwave cavities or Josephson qubits. In this talk I will consider a scenario where polar molecules are coupled to a superconducting stripline cavity and outline potential applications for this system in the context of (hybrid) quantum information processing. I will then focus in some more detail on the bad cavity regime where the coupling to the lossy cavity mode introduces an efficient decay channel for rotational states. This decay channel can be exploited for cavity-assisted cooling methods for polar molecules and I will discuss different cooling mechanisms for this setup as well as their robustness with respect to finite temperature and anharmonicities of the trap. In the last part of my talk I will switch from single molecules to an ensemble of molecules prepared in a high density crystalline phase under 1D trapping conditions and with dipole moments aligned by an external electric field. In this configuration quantum information can be encoded in collective rotational or spin degrees of freedom while still being protected from short-range collisions due to repulsive dipole-dipole interactions. I will show that the physics of a molecular dipolar crystal is described by a polaron-type model and discuss its implications for molecular quantum memories and for applications of molecular crystals as quantum simulators.