Creation of ultracold Sr2 molecules in the electronic ground state

Abstract

We report on the creation of ultracold 84Sr2 molecules in the electronic ground state. The molecules are formed from atom pairs on sites of an optical lattice using stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP). We achieve a transfer efficiency of 30% and obtain 4x10^4 molecules with full control over the external and internal quantum state. STIRAP is performed near the narrow 1S0-3P1 intercombination transition, using a vibrational level of the 0u potential as intermediate state. In preparation of our molecule association scheme, we have determined the binding energies of the last vibrational levels of the 0u, 1u excited-state, and the 1Σ_g^+ ground-state potentials. Our work overcomes the previous limitation of STIRAP schemes to systems with Feshbach resonances, thereby establishing a route that is applicable to many systems beyond bi-alkalis.

7 pages, 7 figures, 3 tables

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• Prospects for application of ultracold Sr${}_2$ molecules in precision measurements

Cited by in corpus (32)

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• Adiabatic loading of one-dimensional SU(N) alkaline earth fermions in optical lattices
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• Cooperative quantum-optical planar arrays of atoms
• A terahertz vibrational molecular clock with systematic uncertainty at the $10^{-14}$ level
• Deviations from Born-Oppenheimer mass scaling in spectroscopy and ultracold molecular physics
• Diatomic molecules of alkali-metal and alkaline-earth-metal atoms: interaction potentials, dipole moments, and polarizabilities
• Enhancing photoassociation rates by non-resonant light control of shape resonances
• Ultracold ${}^{88}{\mathrm{Sr}}_2$ molecules in the absolute ground state
• High-fidelity multistate STIRAP assisted by shortcut fields
• Quantum phase transition of a two-dimensional quadrupolar system
• Two-photon photoassociation spectroscopy of the ${}^2{\Sigma }^{+}$ YbLi molecular ground state
• Laser control of ultracold molecule formation: The case of RbSr
• A hybrid atom tweezer array of nuclear spin and optical clock qubits
• Exotic roton excitations in quadrupolar Bose-Einstein condensates
• Relativistic calculations of $C_6$ and $C_8$ coefficients for strontium dimers
• Optical magnetism and wavefront control by arrays of strontium atoms
• Asymptotic model for shape resonance control of diatomics by intense non-resonant light
• Observation of Bose-enhanced photoassociation products
• Negative refraction of light in an atomic medium
• Photoassociation spectroscopy of ultracold ${}^{173}$Yb atoms near the intercombination line
• Chemical reactions of ultracold alkaline-earth-metal diatomic molecules
• Highly Efficient Creation and Detection of Ultracold Deeply-Bound Molecules via Chainwise Stimulated Raman Shortcut-to-Adiabatic Passage
• Searching for New Fundamental Interactions via Isotopic Shifts in Molecular Lattice Clocks
• Quench dynamics of disordered quadrupolar Bose-Einstein condensates
• Highly Efficient Creation and Detection of Deeply-bound Molecules via Invariant-based Inverse Engineering with Feasible Modified Drivings
• Ground-state selection via many-body superradiant decay
• Low-energy scatterings and pseudopotential of polarized quadrupoles