Ion-atom-molecule interaction measurements*

In this talk, we present our recent experimental results on co-trapping calcium monohydride ions (CaH⁺) with laser-cooled potassium atoms (K) and calcium ions (Ca⁺). Our goal is to attain good stability of the laser-cooled atoms and ions, a pre-requisite for sympathetic cooling of translational and internal state energies of CaH⁺. For this, we developed an ion-atom hybrid trap [1] by combining a magneto-optical trap for atoms with a lineal Paul trap for ions. We investigated the K- Ca⁺ [2] and K-CaH⁺ collisional interactions and these results will be discussed in this presentation.