A pump-probe study of the formation of rubidium molecules by ultrafast photoassociation of ultracold atoms

Abstract

An experimental pump-probe study of the photoassociative creation of translationally ultracold rubidium molecules is presented together with numerical simulations of the process. The formation of loosely bound excited-state dimers is observed as a first step towards a fully coherent pump-dump approach to the stabilization of Rb${}_2$ into its lowest ground vibrational states. The population that contributes to the pump-probe process is characterized and found to be distinct from a background population of pre-associated molecules.

arXiv commentAccepted for publication in Phys. Rev. A (10 pages, 9 figures)

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Cited by in corpus (13)

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• Long-range Rydberg-atom-ion molecules of Rb and Cs
• 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
• Pump Probe Spectroscopy of Bose Polarons: Dynamical Formation and Coherence
• Coherent control of ultracold 85Rb trap-loss collisions with nonlinearly frequency-chirped light
• Production of Ultracold Molecules with Chirped Nanosecond Pulses: Evidence for Coherent Effects
• Efficient Formation of Ultracold Molecules with Chirped Nanosecond Pulses
• Correlation dynamics after short-pulse photoassociation
• Pump-probe spectroscopy of two-body correlations in ultracold gases
• Demonstrating coherent control in 85Rb2 using ultrafast laser pulses: a theoretical outline of two experiments
• Femtosecond pulses and dynamics of molecular photoexcitation: RbCs example
• Effective approaches to the dynamical properties of two distinguishable Bose polarons