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
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.
We are excited to welcome Shimoni Patel as a new PhD student to our team. After earning her master's degree from IIT Hyderabad, she will now work on modeling quantum-controlled molecular collisions.
Congratulations to Richard Karl for being the runner-up for the Best Poster Award at the SCS Fall Meeting 2024. He presented his work on a precision spectroscopy experiment.
Our group
Research
Teaching
Open positions
Recent publications
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)
J. Toscano,
"Rotational-state-selected Carbon Astrochemistry"
Chimia 78 (2024), 40
L. Xu, J. Toscano, and S. Willitsch,,
"Trapping and sympathetic cooling of conformationally selected molecular ions"
Phys. Rev. Lett. 132, 083001(2024) (arXiv:2308.03935)
M. Deiß, S. Willitsch and J. H. Denschlag,
"Cold trapped molecular ions and hybrid platforms for ions and neutral particles"
Nat. Phys. 20 (2024), 713 (arXiv:2311.12640)