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arXiv:1102.2687 · Journal of Physics B Atomic Molecular and Optical Physics

Resonant enhancement of the ultracold photoassociation rate by an electric field-induced anisotropic interaction

Debashree Chakraborty, Jisha Hazra, Bimalendu Deb

Published Apr 19, 2011• 13 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We study the effects of a static electric field on the photoassociation of a heteronuclear atom pair into a polar molecule. The interaction of permanent dipole moment with a static electric field largely affects the ground state continuum wavefunction of the atom pair at short separations where photoassociation transitions occur according to the Franck–Condon principle. Electric field-induced anisotropic interaction between two heteronuclear ground state atoms leads to scattering resonances at some specific electric fields. Near such resonances the amplitude of the scattering wavefunction at short separation increases by several orders of magnitude. As a result, the photoassociation rate is enhanced by several orders of magnitude near the resonances. We discuss in detail electric field-modified atom–atom scattering properties and resonances. We calculate the photoassociation rate that shows giant enhancement due to electric field tunable anisotropic resonances. We present selected results among which particularly important are the excitations of higher rotational levels in ultracold photoassociation due to electric field tunable resonances.

DOI
10.1088/0953-4075/44/9/095201

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We study the effects of a static electric field on the photoassociation of a heteronuclear atom pair into a polar molecule. The interaction of permanent dipole moment with a static electric field largely affects the ground state continuum wavefunction of the atom pair at short separations where photoassociation transitions occur according to the Franck–Condon principle. Electric field-induced anisotropic interaction between two heteronuclear ground state atoms leads to scattering resonances at some specific electric fields. Near such resonances the amplitude of the scattering wavefunction at short separation increases by several orders of magnitude. As a result, the photoassociation rate is enhanced by several orders of magnitude near the resonances. We discuss in detail electric field-modified atom–atom scattering properties and resonances. We calculate the photoassociation rate that shows giant enhancement due to electric field tunable anisotropic resonances. We present selected results among which particularly important are the excitations of higher rotational levels in ultracold photoassociation due to electric field tunable resonances.
We theoretically study saturation effects induced by an external static electric field on photoassociation (PA) of a heteronuclear atom pair. A static electric field influences scattering wave-function of two heteronuclear atoms as described in [D. Chakraborty, J. Hazra and B. Deb, J. Phys. B. {\bf 44} 095201 (2011)]. For certain values of electric field strengths there exist anisotropic resonances in ground state scattering leading to a large modification of scattering wave-function at short and intermediate separations where photoassociative Franck-Condon overlap is significant. Photoassociation rate as a function of collision energy shows a splitting near resonant electric field in the mili Kelvin energy regime. This splitting with a prominent dip occurs due to resonant enhancement of free-bound stimulated linewidth leading to saturation in free-bound transitions. We study electric field induced saturation effects on both one- and two-colour PA. Our results suggest that a static electric field may influence the formation of ground state polar molecules in two-colour PA.
We study non-perturbative effects of a static electric field on two-color photoassociation of different atoms. A static electric field induces anisotropy in scattering between two different atoms and hybridizes field-free rotational states of heteronuclear dimers or polar molecules. In a previous paper [D. Chakraborty et al., J. Phys. B 44, 095201 (2011)], the effects of a static electric field on one-color photoassociation between different atoms has been described through field-modified ground-state scattering states, neglecting electric field effects on heteronuclear diatomic bound states. To study the effects of a static electric field on heteronuclear bound states, and the resulting influence on Raman-type two-color photoassociation between different atoms in the presence of a static electric field, we develop a non-perturbative numerical method to calculate static electric field-dressed heteronuclear bound states. We show that the static electric field induced scattering anisotropy as well as hybridization of rotational states strongly influence two-color photoassociation spectra, leading to significant enhancement in PA rate and large shift. In particular, for static electric field strengths of a few hundred kV/cm, two-color PA rate involving high-lying bound states in electronic ground-state increases by several orders of magnitude even in the weak photoassociative coupling regime.
We study theoretically the Feshbach-optimized photoassociation of the 7Li^{7}\mathrm{Li}7Li and 133Cs^{133}\mathrm{Cs}133Cs atoms driven by electric and magnetic fields. The results show that the combination of electric and magnetic fields can significantly enhance the photoassociation rate by regulating scattering resonance and increasing the probability density of atom pairs at sufficiently short internuclear distance. The electric field can induce the coupling between the sss wave and ppp wave and makes it possible to directly produce ultracold molecules in the lowest rotational state via one-photon stimulated emission photoassociation at ultralow temperature. Moreover, in the presence of a magnetic field, only a relatively weak electric field ($E\ensuremath{\le}100$ kV/cm) is required to realize the scattering resonance for heteronuclear alkali-metal atom pairs.
It is demonstrated that elastic collisions of ultracold atoms forming a heteronuclear collision complex can be manipulated by laboratory practicable dc electric fields. The mechanism of electric field control is based on the interaction of the instantaneous dipole moment of the collision pair with external electric fields. It is shown that this interaction is dramatically enhanced in the presence of a p-wave shape or Feshbach scattering resonance near the collision threshold, which leads to novel electric-field-induced Feshbach resonances.
The formation of heteronuclear molecules in their electronic ground states from a mixture of two ultracold atomic species via a one-photon stimulated emission process is investigated. The presence of an additional external homogeneous and static electric field is shown to severely influence the induced emission process. Using the LiCs molecule as a prototype, we study the corresponding cross section and its dependence on the continuum energy, final rovibrational state, and static electric field strength. The possibility of controlling the single-photon association process via an additional static electric field is demonstrated.
We report on the observation of photoassociation resonances in ultracold collisions between ^{23}Na^{40}K molecules and ^{40}K atoms. We perform photoassociation in a long-wavelength optical dipole trap to form deeply bound triatomic molecules in electronically excited states. The atom-molecule Feshbach resonance is used to enhance the free-bound Franck-Condon overlap. The photoassociation into well-defined quantum states of excited triatomic molecules is identified by observing resonantly enhanced loss features. These loss features depend on the polarization of the photoassociation lasers, allowing us to assign rotational quantum numbers. The observation of ultracold atom-molecule photoassociation resonances paves the way toward preparing ground-state triatomic molecules, provides a new high-resolution spectroscopy technique for polyatomic molecules, and is also important to atom-molecule Feshbach resonances.