Efficient formation of ground state ultracold molecules via STIRAP from the continuum at a Feshbach resonance

Abstract

We develop a complete theoretical description of photoassociative Stimulated Raman Adiabatic Passage (STIRAP) near a Feshbach resonance in a thermal atomic gas. We show that it is possible to use low intensity laser pulses to directly excite the continuum at a Feshbach resonance and transfer nearly the entire atomic population to the lowest rovibrational level in the molecular ground state. In case of a broad resonance, commonly found in several diatomic alkali molecules, our model predicts a transfer efficiency $\eta$ up to 97% for a given atom pair, and up to 70% when averaged over an atomic ensemble. The laser intensities and pulse durations needed for optimal transfer are $10^2-10^3$ W/cm${}^2$ and several $\mu$s. Such efficiency compares to or surpasses currently available techniques for creating stable diatomic molecules, and the versatility of this approach simplifies its potential use for many molecular species.

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• Feshbach-optimized photoassociation of ultracold ${}^6$Li${}^{87}$Rb molecules with short pulses
• Achieving ground-state polar molecular condensates by chainwise atom-molecule adiabatic passage
• Magneto-optical Feshbach resonance: Controlling cold collision with quantum interference
• Jost function description of near threshold resonances for coupled-channel scattering
• Suppression of power-broadening in strong-coupling photoassociation in the presence of a Feshbach resonance
• Mimicking multi-channel scattering with single-channel approaches
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• Pulsed Adiabatic Photoassociation via Scattering Resonances
• Efficient production of polar molecular Bose-Einstein condensates via an all-optical R-type atom-molecule adiabatic passage
• Quantum Effects at Low Energy Atom-Molecule Interface
• Investigation of 3D-Quantized Ring Vortices in Rotating Coupled Atom-Molecular BEC
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• Formation of deeply bound polar molecules combining pump-dump pulses with infrared radiation
• Quantum cooling by unitary transformations
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• Manipulating multimer propagation using lattice modulation