Resonant Coupling in the Heteronuclear Alkali Dimers for Direct Photoassociative Formation of X(0,0) Ultracold Molecules

Abstract

Promising pathways for photoassociative formation of ultracold heteronuclear alkali metal dimers in their lowest rovibronic levels (denoted X(0,0)) are examined using high quality ab initio calculations of potential energy curves currently available. A promising pathway for KRb, involving the resonant coupling of the $2^1\Pi$ and $1^1\Pi$ states just below the lowest excited asymptote (K($4s$)+Rb($5p_{1/2}$)), is found to occur also for RbCs and less promisingly for KCs as well. The resonant coupling of the $3^1{\Sigma }^{+}$ and $1^1\Pi$ states, also just below the lowest excited asymptote, is found to be promising for LiNa, LiK, LiRb, and less promising for LiCs and KCs. Direct photoassociation to the $1^1\Pi$ state near dissociation appears promising in the final dimers, NaK, NaRb, and NaCs, although detuning more than 100 cm${}^{-1}$ below the lowest excited asymptote may be required.

20 pages, 12 figures, Submitted to Journal of Physical Chemistry A

References in corpus (3)

• A High Phase-Space-Density Gas of Polar Molecules
• Optical pumping and vibrational cooling of molecules
• Giant formation rates of ultracold molecules via Feshbach Optimized Photoassociation

Cited by in corpus (13)

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• Continuous Formation of Vibronic Ground State RbCs Molecules via Photoassociation
• Long-range interactions between polar alkali-metal diatoms in external electric fields
• Direct Photoassociative Formation of Ultracold KRb Molecules in the Lowest Vibrational Levels of the Ground State
• Diatomic molecules of alkali-metal and alkaline-earth-metal atoms: interaction potentials, dipole moments, and polarizabilities
• Production of ultracold ground state LiRb molecules by photoassociation through a resonantly coupled state
• Formation of ultracold LiRb molecules by photoassociation near the Li (2s 2S1/2) + Rb (5p 2P1/2) asymptote
• Dynamical process of optically trapped singlet ground state ${}^{85}$Rb${}^{133}$Cs molecules produced via short-range photoassociation
• The twofold diabatization of the KRb $(1\sim 2{)}^1\Pi$ complex in the framework of \emph{ab initio} and deperturbation approaches
• Triplet-singlet conversion in ultracold Cs${}_2$ and production of ground state molecules
• Short-range photoassociation from the inner wall of the lowest triplet potential of ${}^{85}$Rb${}_2$
• Spectroscopy of the Double Minimum $3{}^3{\Pi }_{\Omega }$ Electronic State of ${}^{39}$K${}^{85}$Rb
• Observation and Analysis of Resonant Coupling Between Near-Degenerate Levels of the 2 1Σg+ and 1 1 Πg States of Ultracold 85Rb2