Harvard Quantum Initiative Special Seminar Tuesday, February 12 3:00 PM Jefferson 250 Loïc Anderegg (Harvard) An Optical Array of Ultracold Molecules and Ultracold Molecular Collisions Over the past decades, ultracold atoms have been brought under exquisite control, opening up many new applications ranging from precision measurements to quantum simulations. In addition to atoms, ultracold molecules, with their rich internal structure, promise to be a powerful quantum resource. This has led to intense efforts in controlling molecules. In this talk, I will report on new methods to cool and trap molecules and the creation of an optical tweezer array of single ultracold molecules. This new platform may be used for exploring many different areas in physics. New features available in molecules, such as long-range dipolar interactions, could be harnessed for molecular qubits, quantum simulation of spin lattice Hamiltonians, studies of ultracold quantum chemistry and precision measurements that probe physics beyond the Standard Model. The methods discussed can be extended beyond diatomic molecules to polyatomics, which have new features advantageous for quantum computation and precision measurement. As an initial demonstration of this versatile tweezer platform, we observe ground electronic, excited rotational state collisions of laser cooled molecules for the first time and measure the corresponding inelastic rate coefficients. -- Clare Ploucha Administrative Program Manager Max Planck/Harvard Research Center for Quantum Optics Department of Physics 17 Oxford Street, Jefferson 357 Cambridge, MA 02138 P: 617-495-3388