LAMP-SEMINAR

Polyatomic molecular ions offer new opportunities for precision spectroscopy and quantum control due to their rich internal structure. At the same time, their complex energy levels and lack of cycling transitions make their cooling, state-preparation, and readout challenging. I will present a cryogenic trapped-ion experiment which we recently developed and our first results demonstrating chemistry with single molecular ions, enabling control and detection at the level of individual reaction events. This single-ion methodology opens a new route to studying cold ion-neutral collisions, pushing into the cold regime where quantum effects can influence reaction dynamics. I will also outline our efforts toward quantum logic spectroscopy (QLS) of polyatomics in which a co-trapped atomic ion serves as a coolant and messenger for the internal state of the molecular ion, enabling non-destructive internal-state identification, and conclude by highlighting near-term goals and the scientific opportunities unlocked by combining QLS with cold-collision chemistry for state-resolved reaction control.