Sympathetic Cooling of Ionic Fullerenes with Ultracold Atoms to Millikelvin Temperatures
Abstract
Cooling complex molecular ions to millikelvin temperatures remains a major challenge because their intricate internal structures prevent laser cooling. Here, we propose to use an ultracold gas of Cd atoms to efficiently cool C60+ ions to average kinetic energies of approximately 20 mK, following an initial precooling stage with He buffer gas. Our approach is based on full molecular dynamics simulations using accurate ion-atom interaction potentials derived from high-level electronic structure methods. Furthermore, using a Monte Carlo approach, we predict the formation of C60+ Coulomb crystals supported solely by collisions with the buffer gas. The probability of reaching these cold states shows a pronounced dependence on the number of trapped ions, revealing the competition between neutral-atom cooling and many-ion dynamics in radio-frequency traps.
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BibTeX
@misc{chowdhury2026sympathetic,
title = {{Sympathetic Cooling of Ionic Fullerenes with Ultracold Atoms to Millikelvin Temperatures}},
author = {Saajid Chowdhury and Zhongqi Liang and Yu Wang and Jesús Pérez-Ríos},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2611.05815},
eprint = {2611.05815},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.05815},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Sympathetic Cooling of Ionic Fullerenes with Ultracold Atoms to Millikelvin Temperatures
AU - Saajid Chowdhury
AU - Zhongqi Liang
AU - Yu Wang
AU - Jesús Pérez-Ríos
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/04
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2611.05815
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.05815
AB - Cooling complex molecular ions to millikelvin temperatures remains a major challenge because their intricate internal structures prevent laser cooling. Here, we propose to use an ultracold gas of Cd atoms to efficiently cool C_60^+ ions to average kinetic energies of approximately 20 mK, following an initial precooling stage with He buffer gas. Our approach is based on full molecular dynamics simulations using accurate ion-atom interaction potentials derived from high-level electronic structure methods. Furthermore, using a Monte Carlo approach, we predict the formation of C_60^+ Coulomb crystals supported solely by collisions with the buffer gas. The probability of reaching these cold states shows a pronounced dependence on the number of trapped ions, revealing the competition between neutral-atom cooling and many-ion dynamics in radio-frequency traps.
ER -