Enhancing photoassociation rates by non-resonant light control of shape resonances

Abstract

Photoassociation, assembling molecules from atoms using laser light, is limited by the low density of atom pairs at sufficiently short interatomic separations. Here, we show that non-resonant light with intensities of the order of 10^10 W/cm^2 modifies the thermal cloud of atoms, enhancing the Boltzmann weight of shape resonances and pushing scattering states below the dissociation limit. This leads to an enhancement of photoassociation rates by several orders of magnitude and opens the way to significantly larger numbers of ground state molecules in a thermal ensemble than achieved so far.

References in corpus (21)

• A High Phase-Space-Density Gas of Polar Molecules
• A toolbox for lattice spin models with polar molecules
• Quantum-State Controlled Chemical Reactions of Ultracold KRb Molecules
• Formation of ultracold polar molecules in the rovibrational ground state
• Quantum Gas of Deeply Bound Ground State Molecules
• Ultracold Molecules in the Ro-Vibrational Triplet Ground State
• Optical pumping and vibrational cooling of molecules
• Precision Test of Mass Ratio Variations with Lattice-Confined Ultracold Molecules
• Creation of ultracold Sr2 molecules in the electronic ground state
• Narrow Line Photoassociation in an Optical Lattice
• Giant formation rates of ultracold molecules via Feshbach Optimized Photoassociation
• Controlling collisions of ultracold atoms with dc electric fields
• Optical Production of Stable Ultracold ${}^{88}$Sr${}_2$ Molecules
• Magnetically tunable Feshbach resonances in ultracold Li-Yb mixtures
• Accurate calculations of Sr properties for a high-accuracy optical clock
• Short-pulse photoassociation in rubidium below the D${}_1$ line
• 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
• Fourier-transform spectroscopy of Sr2 and revised ground state potential
• Formation of deeply bound ultracold Sr_2 molecules by photoassociation near the ^1S + ^3P_1 intercombination line
• Impact of Electric Fields on Highly Excited Rovibrational States of Polar Dimers
• Resonant enhancement of ultracold photoassociation rate by electric field induced anisotropic interaction

Cited by in corpus (18)

• Quantum control of molecular rotation
• Manipulation of Molecules with Electromagnetic Fields
• Optimal quantum control of Bose-Einstein condensates in magnetic microtraps: Comparison of GRAPE and Krotov optimization schemes
• 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
• Photodissociation of ultracold diatomic strontium molecules with quantum state control
• Femtosecond two-photon photoassociation of hot magnesium atoms: A quantum dynamical study using thermal random phase wavefunctions
• Ground and excited state properties of the polar and paramagnetic RbSr molecule: a comparative study
• Controlling magnetic Feshbach resonances in polar open-shell molecules with non-resonant light
• Ab initio properties of the ground-state polar and paramagnetic europium-alkali-metal-atom and europium-alkaline-earth-metal-atom molecules
• Swirling the weakly bound helium dimer from inside
• Ultracold magnetically tunable interactions without radiative charge transfer losses between Ca${}^{+}$, Sr${}^{+}$, Ba${}^{+}$, and Yb${}^{+}$ ions and Cr atoms
• Prospects for ultracold polar and magnetic chromium-closed-shell-atom molecules
• Asymptotic model for shape resonance control of diatomics by intense non-resonant light
• Controlling the s-wave scattering length with non-resonant light: Predictions of an asymptotic model
• Photoassociation spectroscopy in Penning ionization reactions at sub-Kelvin temperatures
• Asymptotic model for shape resonance control of diatomics by intense non-resonant light: Universality in the single-channel approximation
• Controlling ultracold $p$-wave collisions with non-resonant light: Predictions of an asymptotic model for the generalized scattering volume
• Effects of a static electric field on two-color photoassociation between different atoms