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arXiv:2202.03355 · Physical Review Research

High phase-space density gas of NaCs Feshbach molecules

Aden Z. Lam, Niccolò Bigagli, Claire Warner, Weijun Yuan, Siwei Zhang, E. Tiemann, Ian Stevenson, Sebastian Will

Published Apr 25, 2022• 24 citations
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Abstract

We report on the creation of ultracold gases of bosonic Feshbach molecules of NaCs.The molecules are associated from overlapping gases of Na and Cs using a Feshbach resonance at 864.12(5) G.We characterize the Feshbach resonance using bound-state spectroscopy, in conjunction with a coupled-channel calculation.By varying the temperature and atom numbers of the initial atomic mixtures, we demonstrate the association of NaCs gases over a wide dynamic range of molecule numbers and temperatures, reaching 70 nK for our coldest systems and a phase-space density near 0.1.This is an important stepping stone for the creation of degenerate gases of strongly dipolar NaCs molecules in their absolute ground state.

DOI
10.1103/physrevresearch.4.l022019

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We report on the creation of ultracold gases of bosonic Feshbach molecules of NaCs.The molecules are associated from overlapping gases of Na and Cs using a Feshbach resonance at 864.12(5) G.We characterize the Feshbach resonance using bound-state spectroscopy, in conjunction with a coupled-channel calculation.By varying the temperature and atom numbers of the initial atomic mixtures, we demonstrate the association of NaCs gases over a wide dynamic range of molecule numbers and temperatures, reaching 70 nK for our coldest systems and a phase-space density near 0.1.This is an important stepping stone for the creation of degenerate gases of strongly dipolar NaCs molecules in their absolute ground state.
Ultracold Feshbach molecules are a crucial intermediate step for the creation of quantum degenerate gases of strongly dipolar molecules. After coherent transfer to the rovibrational ground state, these dimers can realize stable dipolar gases with strong, tunable long-range interactions. Here, we report the creation of bosonic Na 23 K 41 Feshbach molecules by radio-frequency (RF) association. An RF pulse applied on the molecular side of an interspecies Feshbach resonance at 73.6(1) G associates up to 1.1 ( 1 ) × 10 4 molecules from a thermal mixture of Na 23 and K 41 atoms. Measurements of the binding energy reveal a broad resonance width of 5.1(2) G, facilitating robust control over interspecies interactions. The molecule lifetime in the presence of background atoms exceeds 2 ms and increases to approximately 7 ms after removal of Na 23 . These results constitute a key step toward the production of ultracold Na 23 K 41 ground-state molecules and for pursuing shielded evaporative cooling in the dipolar regime.
We report on the creation of bosonic NaCs molecules in their absolute rovibrational ground state via stimulated Raman adiabatic passage. We create ultracold gases with up to 22 000 dipolar NaCs molecules at a temperature of 300(50) nK and a peak density of 1.0(4)×10^{12} cm^{-3}. We demonstrate comprehensive quantum state control by preparing the molecules in a specific electronic, vibrational, rotational, and hyperfine state. We measure the ground state ac polarizability at 1064 nm along with the two-body loss rate, which we find to be universal. Employing the tunability and strength of the permanent electric dipole moment of NaCs, we induce dipole moments of up to 2.6 D at a dc electric field of 2.1(2) kV/cm and demonstrate strong microwave coupling between the two lowest rotational states with a Rabi frequency of 2π×45 MHz. A large electric dipole moment, accessible at relatively small electric fields, makes ultracold gases of NaCs molecules well suited for the exploration of strongly interacting phases of dipolar quantum matter.
In recent years, there has been notable progress in the preparation and control of ultracold gases of diatomic molecules. The next experimental challenge is the production of ultracold polyatomic molecular gases. Here, we report the creation of an ultracold gas of 23 Na 40 K 2 triatomic molecules from a mixture of ground-state sodium-23–potassium-40 ( 23 Na 40 K) molecules and potassium-40 ( 40 K) atoms. The triatomic molecules were created by adiabatic magneto-association through an atom–diatomic molecule Feshbach resonance. We obtained clear evidence for the creation of triatomic molecules by directly detecting them using radio-frequency dissociation. Approximately 4000 triatomic molecules with a high-peak phase-space density of 0.05 could be created. The ultracold triatomic molecules can serve as a launchpad to probe the three-body potential energy surface and may be used to prepare quantum degenerate triatomic molecular gases.
We have successfully prepared an optically trapped ultracold mixture of 23{}^{23}23Na and 87{}^{87}87Rb atoms and studied their interspecies Feshbach resonances. Using two different spin combinations, several sss- and ppp-wave resonances are identified by observing high inelastic losses and temperature increases for both species near resonant magnetic field values. The two sss-wave resonances observed below 500 G between atoms in their lowest-energy levels are possible candidates for Feshbach molecule association. Our results are well characterized by a coupled-channel model which also refines the ground-state interaction potentials between 23{}^{23}23Na and 87{}^{87}87Rb. This work opens up the prospect for preparing ultracold ensembles of ground-state bosonic NaRb molecules which are chemically stable and can provide strong dipolar interactions.
We report the creation of an ultracold gas of bosonic K 39 Cs 133 molecules. We first demonstrate a cooling strategy relying on sympathetic cooling of Cs 133 to produce an ultracold mixture. From this mixture, weakly bound molecules are formed using a Feshbach resonance at 361.7 G. The molecular gas contains 7.6 ( 10 ) × 10 3 molecules with a lifetime of about 130 ms, limited by two-body decay. We perform Feshbach spectroscopy to observe several new interspecies resonances and characterize the bound state used for magnetoassociation. Finally, we fit the combined results to obtain improved K-Cs interaction potentials. This provides a good starting point for the creation of ultracold samples of ground-state K 39 Cs 133 molecules.
We report the creation of ultracold bosonic 23 Na 87 Rb Feshbach molecules via magneto-association. By ramping the magnetic field across an interspecies Feshbach resonance (FR), at least 4000 molecules can be produced out of the near degenerate ultracold mixture. Fast loss due to inelastic atom–molecule collisions is observed, which limits the pure molecule number, after residual atoms removal, to 1700. The pure molecule sample can live for 21.8(8) ms in the optical trap, long enough for future molecular spectroscopy studies toward coherently transferring to the singlet ro-vibrational ground state, where these molecules are stable against chemical reaction and have a permanent electric dipole moment of 3.3 Debye. We have also measured the Feshbach molecule's binding energy near the FR by the oscillating magnetic field method and found these molecules have a large closed-channel fraction.