Engineering an all-optical route to ultracold molecules in their vibronic ground state

Abstract

We propose an improved photoassociation scheme to produce ultracold molecules in their vibronic ground state for the generic case where non-adiabatic effects facilitating transfer to deeply bound levels are absent. Formation of molecules is achieved by short laser pulses in a Raman-like pump-dump process where an additional near-infrared laser field couples the excited state to an auxiliary state. The coupling due to the additional field effectively changes the shape of the excited state potential and allows for efficient population transfer to low-lying vibrational levels of the electronic ground state. Repetition of many pump-dump sequences together with collisional relaxation allows for accumulation of molecules in v=0.

Phys. Rev. A, in press

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Cited by in corpus (14)

• Interatomic potentials, electric properties, and spectroscopy of the ground and excited states of the Rb_2 molecule: Ab initio calculations and effect of a non-resonant field
• The Quantum Speed Limit of Optimal Controlled Phasegates for Trapped Neutral Atoms
• Rovibrational dynamics of the strontium molecule in the A^1Σ_u^+, c^3Π_u, and a^3Σ_u^+ manifold from state-of-the-art ab initio calculations
• Sympathetic cooling of the Ba${}^{+}$ ion by collisions with ultracold Rb atoms: theoretical prospects
• Efficient formation of ground state ultracold molecules via STIRAP from the continuum at a Feshbach resonance
• Formation of ultracold SrYb molecules in an optical lattice by photoassociation spectroscopy: theoretical prospects
• Interaction between LiH molecule and Li atom from state-of-the-art electronic structure calculations
• Enhancement of Ultracold Molecule Formation Using Shaped Nanosecond Frequency Chirps
• Optimized production of ultracold ground-state molecules: Stabilization employing potentials with ion-pair character and strong spin-orbit coupling
• Formation of deeply bound ultracold Sr_2 molecules by photoassociation near the ^1S + ^3P_1 intercombination line
• Two-photon coherent control of femtosecond photoassociation
• Efficient Formation of Ultracold Molecules with Chirped Nanosecond Pulses
• Perspectives for coherent optical formation of strontium molecules in their electronic ground state
• Correlation dynamics after short-pulse photoassociation