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arXiv:0711.4846 · Physical Review Letters

Collisional Control of Ground State Polar Molecules and Universal Dipolar Scattering

Christopher Ticknor

Published Apr 4, 2008• 46 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We explore the impact of the short-range interaction on the scattering of ground state polar molecules and study the transition from a weak to strong dipolar scattering over an experimentally reasonable range of energies and electric field values. In the strong dipolar limit, the scattering scales with respect to a dimensionless quantity defined by mass, induced dipole moment, and collision energy. The scaling has implications for all quantum mechanical dipolar scattering. Furthermore the universal scattering regime will readily be achieved with polar molecules at ultracold temperatures.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.100.133202

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We explore the impact of the short-range interaction on the scattering of ground state polar molecules and study the transition from a weak to strong dipolar scattering over an experimentally reasonable range of energies and electric field values. In the strong dipolar limit, the scattering scales with respect to a dimensionless quantity defined by mass, induced dipole moment, and collision energy. The scaling has implications for all quantum mechanical dipolar scattering. Furthermore the universal scattering regime will readily be achieved with polar molecules at ultracold temperatures.
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The dipolar collision between ultracold polar molecules is an important topic both by its own right from the fundamental point of view and for the successful exploration of many-body physics with strong and longrange dipolar interactions.Here, we report the investigation of collisions between ultracold ground-state sodium-rubidium molecules in electric fields with induced electric dipole moments as large as 0.7 D. We observe a stepwise enhancement of losses due to the coupling between different partial waves induced by the increasingly stronger anisotropic dipolar interactions.Varying the temperature of our sample, we find good agreement with theoretical loss rates assuming complex formation as the main loss process.Our results shed new light on the understanding of complex molecular collisions in the presence of strong dipolar interactions and also demonstrate the versatility of modifying molecular interactions with electric fields.
We report numerical investigation of the short range interaction influence on the two-dimensional quantum scattering of two dipoles. The model simulates two ultracold polar molecules collisions in two spatial dimensions. The used algorithm allows us to quantitatively analyse the scattering of two polarized dipoles with account for strongly anisotropic nature of dipolar interaction. The strong dependence of the scattering total cross section on the short range interaction radius was discovered for threshold collision energies. We also discuss differences of calculated scattering cross section dependencies for different polarisation axis tilt angles.
Ultracold polar molecular gases promise new directions and exciting appli-cations in precision measurements, ultracold chemistry, electric-field controlled collisions, dipolar quantum gases, and quantum information sciences. This the-sis presents experimental realization of a near quantum degenerate gas of polar molecules, where the phase-space density of the gas achieved is more than 10 or-ders of magnitude higher than previous results. The near quantum degenerate gas of polar molecules is created using two coherent steps. First, atoms in an ul-tracold gas mixture are converted into extremely weakly bound molecules near a Fano-Feshbach resonance. Second, the weakly bound molecules are transferred to the ro-vibronic ground state using a coherent two-photon Raman technique. The fact that these ground-state molecules are polar is confirmed with a spectroscopic measurement of the permanent electric dipole moment. Finally, manipulation of the molecular hyperfine state is demonstrated; this allows molecules to be pop-ulated in a single quantum state, in particular, the lowest energy state. With an ultracold gas of molecules, full control of molecular internal state, and electric field as a new handle, ultracold molecular collisions, including ultracold chemical reactions and dipolar collisions, are studied.
Ultracold polar molecular quantum gases promise to open new research directions ranging from the study of ultra-cold chemistry, precision measurements to novel quantum phase transitions. Based on the preparation of high-phase space density gases of polar KRb molecules [1–3], I will discuss the control of dipolar collisions and chemical reactions of polar molecules in a regime where quantum statistics, single scattering partial waves, and quantum threshold laws play a dominant role [4]. In particular, I will point out the crucial role of electric dipole-dipole interactions [5] and external confinement [6] in determining the chemical reaction rate. Finally, I will discuss prospects of reaching quantum degeneracy in bialkali samples of polar molecules and prospects for these systems as novel dipolar quantum many-body systems.