Magnetic Feshbach resonances play a central role in experimental research of atomic gases at ultracold temperatures, as they allow one to control the microscopic interactions between ultracold atoms by tuning an applied magnetic field. These resonances arise due to strong hyperfine interactions between the unpaired electron and the nuclear magnetic moment of the alkali metal atoms. A major thrust of current research is to create an ultracold gas of diatomic alkali-metal molecules in the ground rovibrational state of the ground electronic
1Σ state. Unlike alkali metal atoms,
1Σ diatomic molecules have no unpaired electrons. However, the hyperfine interactions of molecules may give rise to magnetic Feshbach resonances. We use quantum scattering calculations to study the possible width of these resonances. Our results show that the widths of magnetic Feshbach resonances in ultracold molecule-molecule collisions for
1Σ molecules may exceed 1 milliGauss, rendering such resonances experimentally detectable. We hope that this work will stimulate the experimental search of these resonances.
Magnetic Feshbach resonances play a central role in experimental research on atomic gases at ultracold temperatures, as they allow one to control the microscopic interactions between ultracold atoms by tuning an applied magnetic field. These resonances arise due to strong hyperfine interactions between the unpaired electron and the nuclear magnetic moment of the alkali metal atoms. A major thrust of current research is to create an ultracold gas of diatomic alkali metal molecules in the ground rovibrational state of the ground electronic ${}^{1}\ensuremath{\Sigma}$ state. Unlike alkali metal atoms, ${}^{1}\ensuremath{\Sigma}$ diatomic molecules have no unpaired electrons. However, the hyperfine interactions of molecules may give rise to magnetic Feshbach resonances. We use quantum scattering calculations to study the possible width of these resonances. Our results show that the widths of magnetic Feshbach resonances in ultracold molecule-molecule collisions for ${}^{1}\ensuremath{\Sigma}$ molecules may exceed 1 mG, rendering such resonances experimentally detectable. We hope that this work will stimulate the experimental search of these resonances.
We present measurements of the binding energies of 6Li p-wave Feshbach molecules in the three resonances of the two lowest hyperfine states. We find the binding energy scales linearly with magnetic field detuning across all resonances. The gradients of the binding energies have been determined to be 113 +-7, 111+-6, and 119+-8 for the 11, 12, and 22 Feshbach resonances, respectively, in good agreement with theoretical predictions. Further properties of these Feshbach molecules are also investigated.