Creation of an ultracold gas of ground-state ²³\rmNa⁸⁷\rmRb molecules

2016/02/29 by Mingyang Guo, Bing Zhu, Bo Lu +7 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #cond-mat.quant-gas #physics.atom-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.116.205303

published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 205303 (2016) · 5pages, 5 figures

arxiv created 2016/05/19 · arxiv updated 2016/05/23

Abstract

We report the successful production of an ultracold sample of absolute ground-state ²³Na⁸⁷Rb molecules. Starting from weakly-bound Feshbach molecules formed via magneto-association, the lowest rovibrational and hyperfine level of the electronic ground state is populated following a high efficiency and high resolution two-photon Raman process. The high purity absolute ground-state samples have up to 8000 molecules and densities of over 10¹¹ cm^-3. By measuring the Stark shifts induced by external electric fields, we determined the permanent electric dipole moment of the absolute ground-state ²³Na⁸⁷Rb and demonstrated the capability of inducing an effective dipole moment over one Debye. Bimolecular reaction between ground-state ²³Na⁸⁷Rb molecules is endothermic, but we still observed a rather fast decay of the molecular sample. Our results pave the way toward investigation of ultracold molecular collisions in a fully controlled manner, and possibly to quantum gases of ultracold bosonic molecules with strong dipolar interactions.

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