2021/09/14 by V. C. Olaya-Agudelo, Olaya, Vanessa, Jesús Pérez‐Ríos +3
Chemistry · Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Atomic Physics (physics.atom-ph) #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #FOS: Physical sciences #Quantum Information and Cryptography #Quantum Physics (quant-ph) #Spectroscopy and Laser Applications
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2109.06411
openalex publication_date 2021/09/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We study ultracold long-range collisions of heteronuclear alkali-metal dimers with a reservoir gas of alkali-metal Rydberg atoms in a two-photon laser excitation scheme. In a low density regime where molecules remain outside the Rydberg orbits of the reservoir atoms, we show that the two-photon photoassociation (PA) of the atom-molecule pair into a long-range bound trimer state is efficient over a broad range of atomic Rydberg channels. As a case study, we obtain the PA lineshapes for the formation of trimers composed of KRb molecules in the rovibrational ground state and excited Rb atoms in the asymptotic Rydberg levels n2Sj and n2Dj, for n=20-80. We predict atom-molecule binding energies in the range 10-103 kHz for the first vibrational state below threshold. The average trimer formation rate is order 108 \rm s-1 at 1.0 μK, and depends weakly on the principal quantum number n. Our results set the foundations for a broader understanding of exotic long range collisions of dilute molecules in ultracold atomic Rydberg reservoirs.