Ultracold Polar Molecules: New Phases of Matter for Quantum Information and Quantum Control.

摘要

This 'final' report is a summary of the annual work reports for grant 10-3081; two years into the grant, the PI left this institution for the University of Strasbourg, and so this grant has been terminated and superseded by grant FA8655-13-1-3032, and the work is ongoing. In the first two years of the project the investigators examined the use of ultracold (millikelvin to microkelvin) atoms and molecules in lattices to discover new ways of manipulating and characterizing their interactions. Notable accomplishments in the first two years include theorization of a supersolid state in ultracold polar molecules trapped in optical 2D and 1D lattices, proposition and examination of ways to obtain long-range interactions in gases of atoms weakly dressed by laser light, prediction of the existence of stable liquids/crystals of multimers (trimers, etc) of polar molecules trapped in 1D optical lattices, design of a dissipative cooling scheme for polar molecules and Rydberg atoms which could lead to cooling of polar molecules to microkelvin temperatures, and design of the first schemes for quantum information processing in self- assembled crystals of polar molecules. These accomplishments represent significant progress toward AFOSR research goals in quantum simulation and quantum information processing, and the continuation of the superseding grant should produce excellent results. The new grant was enacted with a start date of 8/1/2013, but no significant progress was made in early 2013 due to the transfer.