Creation and dynamics of ultracold molecules in external electromagnetic fields

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The proposed research will explore novel methods to create and thermally isolate molecules at temperatures near absolute zero (1 nanoKelvin - 1 Kelvin), mechanisms to manipulate and control collisions and chemical reactions of ultracold molecules by external electric and magnetic fields, and statistical properties of ultracold molecules such as diffusion at zero Kelvin temperature. The field of ultracold molecules is new (less than 8 years old) and it is very rapidly expanding. Potential applications of ultracold molecules range from tests of fundamental symmetries of nature, to quantum computation, to studies of fine details of intermolecular potentials, to rigorous tests of quantum reaction rate theories. Our work will assist the development of experimental techniques for cooling and trapping molecules at subKelvin temperatures, thus expanding the scope of the field of ultracold molecules. Ours will be the first work on ultracold chemical reactions in external electric and magnetic fields. Controlling chemical reactions with electromagnetic fields has long been a sought-after goal of researchers. External field control of chemical reactions will not only allow chemists to selectively produce desired species, but also reveal mechanisms of chemical reactions, yield information on interactions determining chemical reactions and elucidate the role of non-adiabatic and relativistic effects in chemical dynamics. External fields may influence molecular collisions when the translational energy of the molecules is smaller than the perturbation due to interactions with external fields. Due to the rapid progress of the experimental work with ultracold molecules, the conditions are now ripe for the development of the field of controlled ultracold chemistry.