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arXiv:1601.02070 · Physical Review A

Long-range states of the NaRb molecule near the Na(3 2S1/2)+Rb(5 2P3/2) asymptote

Bing Zhu, Xiaoke Li, Xiaodong He, Mingyang Guo, Fudong Wang, Romain Véxiau, Nadia Bouloufa-Maafa, Olivier Dulieu, Dajun Wang

Published Jan 14, 2016• 8 citations
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Abstract

We report a high-resolution spectroscopic investigation of the long-range states of the $^{23}\mathrm{Na}^{87}\mathrm{Rb}$ molecule near its $\mathrm{Na}(3{\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}}^{2}{S}_{1/2})+\mathrm{Rb}(5{\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}}^{2}{P}_{3/2})$ asymptote. This study was performed with weakly bound ultracold molecules produced via magnetoassociation with an interspecies Feshbach resonance. We observed several regular vibrational series, which are assigned to the five attractive long-range states correlated with this asymptote. The vibrational levels of two of these states have sharp but complex structures due to hyperfine and Zeeman interactions. For the other states we observed significant linewidth broadenings due to strong predissociation caused by spin-orbit couplings with states correlated to the lower $\mathrm{Na}(3{\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}}^{2}{S}_{1/2})+\mathrm{Rb}(5{\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}}^{2}{P}_{1/2})$ asymptote. The long-range ${C}_{6}$ van der Waals coefficients extracted from our spectrum are in good agreement with theoretical values.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.93.012508

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We have observed the spectrum of long range molecular states of singly excited Na2{\mathrm{Na}}_{2}Na2​ formed by photoassociation during ultracold associative ionization collisions of laser-cooled Na atoms. The low kinetic energy of the collision allows us to obtain very high resolution spectra and to observe states close to the dissociation limit. The spectrum shows regular vibrational series characteristic of the 1/R3{\mathit{R}}^{3}R3 long range portion of the 1g{1}_{\mathit{g}}1g​ potential (asymptotically S1/2{\mathit{S}}_{1/2}S1/2​+P3/2{\mathit{P}}_{3/2}P3/2​) as well as molecular hyperfine structure within these peaks. We extract potential parameters and compare with recent theory.
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