Generating ensembles of polyatomic molecules at cold and ultracold temperatures

Realizing a source of molecules at cold and ultracold temperatures is a formidable challenge. To this end, our group is following a multipronged approach. As an initial source of molecules, velocity filtering~[1] and buffergas cooling~[2] can be used. To reduce the velocity of fast molecules from these sources to trappable speeds, we have recently demonstrated a novel centrifuge decelerator~[3]. A key feature of this deceleration technique is its ability to decelerate continuous beams. Once the molecules are trapped, we have demonstrated optoelectrical Sisyphus cooling~[4] to further reduce the temperature. Our current efforts, focused on combining the various approaches and further reducing the temperature to the submillikelvin regime, will be discussed.\\[4pt] [1] S.A. Rangwala et al., Phys. Rev. A {\bf 67}, 043406 (2003)\\[0pt] [2] L.D. van Buuren et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 102}, 033001 (2009)\\[0pt] [3] S. Chervenkov et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 112}, 013001 (2014)\\[0pt] [4] M. Zeppenfeld et al., Nature {\bf 491}, 570 (2012)