Sub-Doppler Cooling and Compressed Trapping of YO Molecules at <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:mrow><mml:mi>μ</mml:mi><mml:mi mathvariant="normal">K</mml:mi></mml:mrow></mml:math> Temperatures

Complex molecular structure demands customized solutions to laser cooling by extending its general set of principles and practices. Compared with other laser-cooled molecules, yttrium monoxide (YO) exhibits a large electron-nucleus interaction, resulting in a dominant hyperfine interaction over the electron spin-rotation coupling. The YO ground state is thus comprised of two manifolds of closely spaced states, with one of them possessing a...