113 research outputs found
Short-pulse photoassociation in rubidium below the D line
Photoassociation of two ultracold rubidium atoms and the subsequent formation
of stable molecules in the singlet ground and lowest triplet states is
investigated theoretically. The method employs laser pulses inducing
transitions via excited states correlated to the asymptote.
Weakly bound molecules in the singlet ground or lowest triplet state can be
created by a single pulse while the formation of more deeply bound molecules
requires a two-color pump-dump scenario. More deeply bound molecules in the
singlet ground or lowest triplet state can be produced only if efficient
mechanisms for both pump and dump steps exist. While long-range
-potentials allow for efficient photoassociation, stabilization is
facilitated by the resonant spin-orbit coupling of the states.
Molecules in the singlet ground state bound by a few wavenumbers can thus be
formed. This provides a promising first step toward ground state molecules
which are ultracold in both translational and vibrational degrees of freedom
Calculation of three-body resonances using slow-variable discretization coupled with complex absorbing potential
We developed a method to calculate positions and widths of three-body
resonances. The method combines the hyperspherical adiabatic approach, slow
variable discretization method (Tolstikhin et al., J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt.
Phys. 29, L389 (1996)), and a complex absorbing potential. The method can be
used to obtain resonances having short-range or long-range wave functions. In
particular, we applied the method to obtain very shallow three-body Efimov
resonances for a model system (Nielsen et al., Phys. Rev. A 66, 012705 (2002)).Comment: 23 pages, 10 figure
Dynamical interferences to probe short-pulse photoassociation of Rb atoms and stabilization of Rb_2 dimers
We analyze the formation of Rb_2 molecules with short photoassociation pulses
applied to a cold Rb-85 sample. A pump laser pulse couples a continuum level of
the ground electronic state X ^1\Sigma_{g}^+ with bound levels in the 0_{u}^+
(5S+5P_{1/2}) and 0_{u}^+ (5S+5P_{3/2}) vibrational series. The nonadiabatic
coupling between the two excited channels induces time-dependent beatings in
the populations. We propose to take advantage of these oscillations to design
further laser pulses that probe the photoassociation process via
photoionization or that optimize the stabilization in deep levels of the ground
state.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures. v2: major changes in introduction, discussion
clarified. v3: minor corrections. v4: matches published versio
Calculation of three-body resonances using slow-variable discretization coupled with a complex absorbing potential
We developed a method to calculate positions and widths of three-body resonances. The method combines the hyperspherical adiabatic approach, slow variable discretization method [O. I. Tolstikhin , J. Phys. B 29, L389 (1996)], and a complex absorbing potential. The method can be used to obtain resonances having short-range or long-range wave functions. In particular, we have applied the method to obtain very shallow three-body Efimov resonances for a model system [E. Nielsen , Phys. Rev. A 66, 012705 (2002)]
Stabilization of Ultracold Molecules Using Optimal Control Theory
In recent experiments on ultracold matter, molecules have been produced from
ultracold atoms by photoassociation, Feshbach resonances, and three-body
recombination. The created molecules are translationally cold, but
vibrationally highly excited. This will eventually lead them to be lost from
the trap due to collisions. We propose shaped laser pulses to transfer these
highly excited molecules to their ground vibrational level. Optimal control
theory is employed to find the light field that will carry out this task with
minimum intensity. We present results for the sodium dimer. The final target
can be reached to within 99% if the initial guess field is physically
motivated. We find that the optimal fields contain the transition frequencies
required by a good Franck-Condon pumping scheme. The analysis is able to
identify the ranges of intensity and pulse duration which are able to achieve
this task before other competing process take place. Such a scheme could
produce stable ultracold molecular samples or even stable molecular
Bose-Einstein condensates
Creating Ground State Molecules with Optical Feshbach Resonances in Tight Traps
We propose to create ultracold ground state molecules in an atomic
Bose-Einstein condensate by adiabatic crossing of an optical Feshbach
resonance. We envision a scheme where the laser intensity and possibly also
frequency are linearly ramped over the resonance. Our calculations for
Rb show that for sufficiently tight traps it is possible to avoid
spontaneous emission while retaining adiabaticity, and conversion efficiencies
of up to 50% can be expected
The dynamical hole in ultrafast photoassociation: analysis of the compression effect
Photoassociation of a pair of cooled atoms by excitation with a short chirped
laser pulse creates a dynamical hole in the initial continuum wavefunction.
This hole is manifested by a void in the pair wavefunction and a momentum kick.
Photoassociation into loosely bound levels of the external well in Cs_2
0(6S + 6P is considered as a case study. After the pulse, the
free evolution of the ground triplet state wavepacket is analyzed. Due to a
negative momentum kick, motion to small distances is manifested and a
compression effect is pointed out, markedly increasing the density of atom
pairs at short distance. A consequence of the hole is the redistribution of the
vibrational population in the ground triplet state, with population of the last
bound level and creation of pairs of hot atoms. The physical interpretation
makes use of the time dependence of the probability current and population on
each channel to understand the role of the parameters of the photoassociation
pulse. By varying such parameters, optimization of the compression effect in
the ground state wavepacket is demonstrated. Due to an increase of the short
range density probability by more than two orders of magnitude, we predict
important photoassociation rates into deeply bound levels of the excited state
by a second pulse, red-detuned relative to the first one and conveniently
delayed.Comment: 31 pages, 11 figure
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