CAREER: Interactions in Cold Molecular Systems

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This CAREER award supports an experimental research program investigating cold and ultracold molecular collisions and chemical reactions in an unexplored temperature regime close to absolute zero. Interactions between polar molecules are critically different from those between cold atoms. The long-range dipole-dipole interactions present in molecular systems are anisotropic not only in magnitude, but also in sign. These large anisotropic interactions create new dynamics and handles to control collisions in polar molecule systems. Cold molecules will be produced by Stark deceleration, which uses inhomogeneous electric fields to slow the molecules to rest. The resulting molecules will be trapped using electric and magnetic fields leading to long interactions times and thus precise measurements of the collisions. Once the cold dense samples are created, chemical reactions and collisions with rubidium atoms will be studied at milliKelvin temperatures. Until now, chemists have been not been able to study reactions below 10K. Understanding lower temperature reactions is critical to modeling several relevant chemical systems including interstellar cloud chemistry. The broader impacts of this work include an integrated plan for improving student learning of experimental science. Several levels of students will be addressed in this program. The first group will be upper-level undergraduate physics majors. Undergraduate students often are not exposed to the process of professional research. Most senior lab courses are cookbook in nature and fail to teach students the necessary skills for independent research. A systematic, evaluation-based approach will be taken to change the senior-level lab course in both structure and content to address this deficiency in undergraduate education. In addition to restructuring the senior lab course, a workshop session titled ?From light bulbs to lasers? will be developed to introduce middle-school-aged girls to experimental science.