In this thesis we present the results of three different projects, two experimental and one theoretical. First, we report on the demonstration and characterization of a high-flux beam source for cold, slow atoms or molecules. The desired species is vaporized using laser ablation, then cooled by thermalization in a cryogenic cell of buffer gas. The beam is formed by particles exiting a hole in the buffer gas cell. We characterize the properties of the beam (flux, forward velocity, temperature) for both an atom (Na) and a molecule (PbO) under varying buffer gas density, and discuss conditions for optimizing these beam parameters. We construct a magnetic octupole guide and demonstrate the guiding of ∼10⁸ lithium atoms in a several millisecond long pulse from the source. We expect this beam source to be useful both in spectroscopic experiments and in atom and molecule trapping experiments.

Second, we report on the first observation of the effects of spin-orbit induced electronic anisotropy in cold collisions. We observe fast Zeeman relaxation in two heavy nominally S-state atoms, rhenium and bismuth, in collisions with ³He. We measure an upper bound for the elastic to inelastic collision ratio, γ for Zeeman state changing collisions in Re-He of γ < 3 × 10⁵ and in Bi-He of γ < 8 × 10 ³. These results show that these atoms are not good candidates for trapping in high-field seeking states.

Finally, we develop a proposal for a new quantum computing architecture based on trapped polar molecules coupled to superconducting microwave stripline resonators. We describe methods to enable the trapping, cooling, coherent manipulation and coupling of isolated polar molecules at sub-micron dimensions near the surface of microchips with mesoscale electrodes. We show that polar molecules can exhibit strong confinement using electrical traps and describe the design and simulation of chip-based electrostatic traps and guides. We also show that this system enables fast electrical gate control comparable to solid-state qubit systems. We also discuss the dominant noise sources and their suppression using preparation and manipulation of molecular states.