Quantum materials and ultra-cold chemistry with atomic and molecular gases

最近激光冷却技术的突破使得超冷原子的研究成为近十年来物理科学中最具吸引力和最活跃的研究领域之一。1997年、2001年和2005年的诺贝尔物理学奖凸显了超冷原子及其相关技术的广泛影响和重要性。与此同时，在过去的五年里，人们对冷分子的兴趣开始激增。现在人们普遍认为，超冷分子提供了与冷原子相同的科学研究途径，并提供了超越冷原子的全新可能性，以研究物理和化学中广泛的基础和实际问题。与超冷原子相比，超冷分子的重要性来自于分子不同于原子的特性。这些特征是粒子-粒子相互作用可以比原子更大，具有更丰富的空间结构，并且具有更长的范围。分子也有额外的内部自由度，包括旋转和振动，这在原子中是不存在的。因此，超冷分子的集合是化学和物理学新领域的宝库。

Recent technological breakthroughs in laser cooling have made the study of ultracold atoms one of the most attractive and active research fields in the physical sciences for the last 10 years. The broad impact and importance of ultracold atoms and related technologies were highlighted by the award of the 1997, 2001, and 2005 Nobel prizes in physics. At the same time, interest in cold molecules has begun to explode in the last five years. It is now widely accepted that ultracold molecules offer access to the same science as cold atoms and also to completely new possibilities, beyond those offered by cold atoms, to study a wide range of fundamental and practical questions in both physics and chemistry. The importance of ultracold molecules in relation to ultracold atoms arises from the features of molecules which make them distinct from atoms. These features are that the particle-particle interactions can be much larger, have a richer spatial structure, and have a longer range than in atoms. Molecules also have additional internal degrees of freedom, including rotations and vibrations, absent in atoms. Ensembles of ultracold molecules are therefore a treasury of new frontiers in both chemistry and physics.