Suppression of Inelastic Collisions Between Polar Molecules With a Repulsive Shield

2008/05/05 by A. V. Gorshkov, Alexey V. Gorshkov, P. Rabl +9 · 3 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Atomic and Molecular Physics #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Quantum Electrodynamics and Casimir Effect #cond-mat.other #cond-mat.stat-mech #quant-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.101.073201

published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 073201 (2008) · 4 pages, 3 figures

arxiv created 2008/05/05 · openalex publication_date 2008/08/14 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04

Abstract

We propose and analyze a technique that allows one to suppress inelastic collisions and simultaneously enhance elastic interactions between cold polar molecules. The main idea is to cancel the leading dipole-dipole interaction with a suitable combination of static electric and microwave fields in such a way that the remaining van der Waals-type potential forms a three-dimensional repulsive shield. We analyze the elastic and inelastic scattering cross sections relevant for evaporative cooling of polar molecules and discuss the prospect for the creation of stable crystalline structures.

Citations

• Magnetoelectrostatic Trapping of Ground State OH Molecules
• Quantum Phases of Dipolar Bosons in Optical Lattices

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Related

• Double Microwave Shielding
• Ro-vibrational van der Waals interaction between ultracold polar molecules
• Collisional relaxation in shielded dipolar molecular gases
• Effective anisotropic interaction potentials for pairs of ultracold molecules shielded by a static electric field
• Prospects for thermalization of microwave-shielded ultracold molecules