Colorado Cold Molecule Workshop

(COCOMO)

July 15-17, 2009

JILA, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309-0440

John Bohn

Deborah Jin

Heather Lewandowski

Jun Ye

Ode to Cold Molecules
by John Bohn

The hottest new thing in the world of cold matter
Is to join pairs of atoms that are trying to scatter;
Or else to begin with a molecule first
And to bring it to rest, being gently coerced.

With either approach you arrive at a state
Where molecules meet with an ultracold fate.
Now, dipolar species are more to be prized,
Since spatial isotropy gets compromised.

There are lots of good reasons to do this - you bet! -
Including a few no one's thought about yet.
But in case there are naysayers here in our midst
We present for your pleasure a very short list:

     Can time travel backward? And how would we know?
     A slow enough molecule might tell us so.
     And the fine structure constant, that's held through the ages,
     May not be so constant, according to sages.

     With very cold molecules comes great precision
     In seeing what happens because of collisions.
     Will chemistry happen? And can it be checked?
     Perhaps - if electric fields have an effect.

     An optical lattice of dipoles soon raises
     The option of making unusual phases.
     Checkerboards, solitons, BCS pairing -
     Condensed matter physics was never so daring.

     A dipole that's pointing in either direction
     Will lead you to think that, on further reflection,
     A superposition state likely provides
     A qubit that factors a number's insides.

In labs the world over we can't get enough
Of this ultracold, dipolar, marvelous stuff!
So pack up your bags and come out to Boulder
To share our excitement for everything colder.