Cavity Cooling of Internal Molecular Motion

We predict that it is possible to cool rotational, vibrational, and translational degrees of freedom of molecules by coupling a molecular dipole transition to an optical cavity. The dynamics is numerically simulated for a realistic set of experimental parameters using OH molecules. The results show that the translational motion is cooled to a few μK and the internal state is prepared in one of the two ground states of the two decoupled rotational ladders in a few seconds. Shorter cooling times are expected for molecules with larger polarizability.