Sympathetically cooled molecular ions: from principles to first applications

We review the current status of the field of sympathetically cooled molecular ions, i.e. the method used for cooling the translational degrees of freedom, the techniques applied for detection and analysis of the cold trapped ion ensembles produced as well as first applications. We summarize a few salient results and point out various possibilities for future developments.
Comment: 52 pages, 41 figures; to appear in "Cold Molecules", R. Krems, B. Friedrich, and W. Stwalley, eds., Taylor and Francis (2009)