Speaker: Stefan Willitsch
Affiliation: Department of Chemistry, University of Basel, Switzerland
Date: Tuesday, 15 March 2011 at 11:00
Location: Seminar Room, Serrano 121 (CFMAC)
In the presentation, we will discuss recent experiments to selectively prepare and control the internal (rotational-vibrational) quantum state of sympathetically-cooled molecular ions in ion traps. Using molecular nitrogen ions as a test system, we present methods to initialize the ions in a specific quantum state, discuss the impact of sympathetic cooling, highlight the factors limiting the lifetimes of the molecular states under typical experimental conditions and explore prospects for applications in the realm of quantum technology.