Theory of cavity-assisted microwave cooling of polar molecules

We analyze cavity-assisted cooling schemes for polar molecules in the microwave domain, where molecules are excited on a rotational transition and energy is dissipated via strong interactions with a lossy stripline cavity, as recently proposed by André et al 2006 Nat. Phys. 2 636. We identify the dominant cooling and heating mechanisms in this setup and study cooling rates and final temperatures in various parameter regimes. In particular, we analyze the effects of a finite environment temperature on the cooling efficiency, and find minimal temperature and optimized cooling rate in the strong drive regime. Further, we discuss the trade-off between efficiency of cavity cooling and robustness with respect to ubiquitous imperfections in a realistic experimental setup, such as anharmonicity of the trapping potential.