We report on the formation of translationally cold Cs2 ground-state molecules through photoassociation of laser-cooled cesium atoms in a magneto-optical trap. The cold molecules are obtained after spontaneous decay of photoassociated molecules, and detected after pulsed-laser photoionization into Cs2+ ions. Photoassociation spectra of cesium attractive molecular states below the 6S1/2+6P3/2 dissociation limits are reported, obtained with both ion detection and trap-loss method. A temperature as low as 20−5+15 has been measured for the molecular cloud.
We report on the observation of translationally cold Cs2 molecules at temperatures in the 300–70 μK range, produced by the photoassociation of cold Cs atoms in a vapor-cell magneto-optical trap. The detection method is based on pulsed-laser photoionization of Cs2 molecules into Cs2+ ions, selectively detected through a time-of-flight mass spectrometer. This technique, together with the usual trap-loss method, enables us to perform the spectroscopy of the long-range attractive molecular states below the 6s 2S1/2+6p 2P3/2 dissociation limit.
We have performed photoassociative spectroscopy of cold Cs atoms in a vapor-cell magneto-optical trap, within $10{\mathrm{cm}}^{\ensuremath{-}1}$ below the dissociation limit
6s2S1/2+6p2P3/2. Our detection method is based on pulsed-laser photoionization of
Cs2 molecules, selectively detected through a time-of-flight mass spectrometer. Temporal and spatial analysis of
Cs2+ ions show for the first time the formation of translationally cold
Cs2 triplet ground state molecules, at a temperature $T\ensuremath{\sim}300\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{K}$.