Radiative force from optical cycling on a diatomic molecule

Abstract

We demonstrate a scheme for optical cycling in the polar, diatomic molecule strontium monofluoride (SrF) using the $X ^2Σ^+\toA^2Π_{1/2}$ electronic transition. SrF's highly diagonal Franck-Condon factors suppress vibrational branching. We eliminate rotational branching by employing a quasi-cycling $N=1\to N^\prime=0$ type transition in conjunction with magnetic field remixing of dark Zeeman sublevels. We observe cycling fluorescence and deflection through radiative force of an SrF molecular beam using this scheme. With straightforward improvements our scheme promises to allow more than $10^5$ photon scatters, possibly enabling the direct laser cooling of SrF.