79 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
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
Ultracold heteronuclear molecules in a 3D optical lattice
We report on the creation of ultracold heteronuclear molecules assembled from
fermionic 40K and bosonic 87Rb atoms in a 3D optical lattice. Molecules are
produced at a heteronuclear Feshbach resonance both on the attractive and the
repulsive side of the resonance. We precisely determine the binding energy of
the heteronuclear molecules from rf spectroscopy across the Feshbach resonance.
We characterize the lifetime of the molecular sample as a function of magnetic
field and measure between 20 and 120ms. The efficiency of molecule creation via
rf association is measured and is found to decrease as expected for more deeply
bound molecules.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
Photoassociation of cold atoms with chirped laser pulses: time-dependent calculations and analysis of the adiabatic transfer within a two-state model
This theoretical paper presents numerical calculations for photoassociation
of ultracold cesium atoms with a chirped laser pulse and detailed analysis of
the results. In contrast with earlier work, the initial state is represented by
a stationary continuum wavefunction. In the chosen example, it is shown that an
important population transfer is achieved to vibrational levels in
the vicinity of the v=98 bound level in the external well of the
potential. Such levels lie in the energy range swept by
the instantaneous frequency of the pulse, thus defining a ``photoassociation
window''. Levels outside this window may be significantly excited during the
pulse, but no population remains there after the pulse. Finally, the population
transfer to the last vibrational levels of the ground (6s + 6s)
is significant, making stable molecules. The results are interpreted in the
framework of a two state model as an adiabatic inversion mechanism, efficient
only within the photoassociation window. The large value found for the
photoassociation rate suggests promising applications. The present chirp has
been designed in view of creating a vibrational wavepacket in the excited state
which is focussing at the barrier of the double well potential.Comment: 49 pages, 9 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.
High-resolution spectroscopy of triplet states of Rb2 by femtosecond pump-probe photoionization of doped helium nanodroplets
The dynamics of vibrational wave packets in triplet states of rubidium dimers
(Rb2) formed on helium nanodroplets are studied using femtosecond pump-probe
photoionization spectroscopy. Due to fast desorption of the excited Rb2
molecules off the droplets and due to their low internal temperature, wave
packet oscillations can be followed up to very long pump-probe delay times
>1.5ns. In the first excited triplet state (1)^3\Sigma_g^+, full and fractional
revivals are observed with high contrast. Fourier analysis provides
high-resolution vibrational spectra which are in excellent agreement with ab
initio calculations
Optimizing the photoassociation of cold atoms by use of chirped laser pulses
Photoassociation of ultracold atoms induced by chirped picosecond pulses is
analyzed in a non-perturbative treatment by following the wavepackets dynamics
on the ground and excited surfaces. The initial state is described by a
Boltzmann distribution of continuum scattering states. The chosen example is
photoassociation of cesium atoms at temperature T=54 from the continuum to bound levels in the external well of the
potential. We study how the modification of the pulse
characteristics (carrier frequency, duration, linear chirp rate and intensity)
can enhance the number of photoassociated molecules and suggest ways of
optimizing the production of stable molecules.Comment: 40 pages, 12 figures, submitted to Eur. Phys. J.
Application of B-splines to determining eigen-spectrum of Feshbach molecules
The B-spline basis set method is applied to determining the rovibrational
eigen-spectrum of diatomic molecules. A particular attention is paid to a
challenging numerical task of an accurate and efficient description of the
vibrational levels near the dissociation limit (halo-state and Feshbach
molecules). Advantages of using B-splines are highlighted by comparing the
performance of the method with that of the commonly-used discrete variable
representation (DVR) approach. Several model cases, including the Morse
potential and realistic potentials with 1/R^3 and 1/R^6 long-range dependence
of the internuclear separation are studied. We find that the B-spline method is
superior to the DVR approach and it is robust enough to properly describe the
Feshbach molecules. The developed numerical method is applied to studying the
universal relation of the energy of the last bound state to the scattering
length. We numerically illustrate the validity of the quantum-defect-theoretic
formulation of such a relation for a 1/R^6 potential.Comment: submitted to can j phys: Walter Johnson symposu
Giant Helium Dimers Produced by Photoassociation of Ultracold Metastable Atoms
We produce giant helium dimers by photoassociation of metastable helium atoms
in a magnetically trapped, ultracold cloud. The photoassociation laser is
detuned red of the atomic line and produces strong heating
of the sample when resonant with molecular bound states. The temperature of the
cloud serves as an indicator of the molecular spectrum. We report good
agreement between our spectroscopic measurements and our calculations of the
five bound states belonging to a purely long-range potential well.
These previously unobserved states have classical inner turning points of about
150 and outer turning points as large as 1150 .Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
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