The Willitsch Group - Cold and Controlled Molecules and Ions
Welcome to the Cold and Controlled Molecules and Ions group at the University of Basel led by Prof. Stefan Willitsch and the astrochemistry subgroup led by Dr Jutta Toscano. Our research is concerned with the preparation and control of cold molecules and molecular ions and their applications in both chemistry and physics. On this website, you can find information about our group, our research, our teaching and opportunities to join us.
Recent News
Congratulations to Aleksandr Shlykov on the successful defense of his thesis, titled “Rovibrational State Preparation and Coherent Manipulation of Single N₂⁺ Molecular Ions”.
We are delighted to warmly welcome Dr. Yaya Zhi from USTC, China, as he joins our research team. He will be continuing the project on “Hybrid trapping of cold ions and cold atoms.”
We are pleased to welcome our new PhD student, Umesh Chandra Joshi, to the team. He obtained his master's degree from DIAT in India and will be working on the QuTe setup.
Our group
Research
Teaching
Open positions
Recent publications
A. Mishra, J. Kim, S. K. Kim and S. Willitsch,
"Isomer-selective dissociation dynamics of 1,2-dibromoethene ionized by femtosecond-laser radiation"
( arXiv:2504.20546)
M. Roguski, A. Shlykov, Z. Meir and S. Willitsch,
"The role of spectator modes in the quantum-logic spectroscopy of single trapped molecular ions"
(arXiv:2504.02642)
Y. Yin and S. Willitsch,
"Ion counting and temperature determination of Coulomb-crystallized laser-cooled ions in traps using convolutional neural networks"
(arXiv:2502.18442)
P. Paliwal, M. Popov, N. S. Kumar, and S. Willitsch,
"Exploring and Controlling Chemistry Using Quantum Logic"
Chimia 78 (2024) 654–658
M. Weegen, M. Poggio and S. Willitsch,
"Coupling trapped ions to a nanomechanical oscillator"
Phys. Rev. Lett. 133 (2024), 223201 (arXiv:2312.00576)
A. Mishra, J. Kim, S. K. Kim and S. Willitsch,
"Isomeric and rotational effects in the chemi-ionisation of 1,2-dibromoethene with metastable neon atoms"
Faraday Discuss. 251 (2024), 92
L. Ploenes, P. Stranák, A. Mishra, X. Liu, J. Pérez-Ríos and S. Willitsch,
"Collisional alignment and molecular rotation control chemi-ionization of individual conformers"
Nat. Chem. 16 (2024), 1876 (arXiv:2401.11916)