Formation of ultracold LiRb molecules by photoassociation near the Li (2s 2S1/2) + Rb (5p 2P1/2) asymptote

Abstract

We report the production of ultracold 7Li85Rb molecules by photoassociation (PA) below the Li (2s 2S1/2) + Rb (5p 2P1/2) asymptote. We perform PA spectroscopy in a dual-species 7Li-85Rb magneto-optical trap (MOT) and detect the PA resonances using trap loss spectroscopy. We observe several strong PA resonances corresponding to the last few bound states, assign the lines and derive the long range C6 dispersion coefficients for the Li (2s 2S1/2) + Rb (5p 2P1/2) asymptote. We also report an excited-state molecule formation rate (P_LiRb) of ~10^7 s^-1 and a PA rate coefficient (K_PA) of ~4x10^-11 cm^3/s, which are both among the highest observed for heteronuclear bi-alkali molecules. These suggest that PA is a promising route for the creation of ultracold ground state LiRb molecules.

6 pages

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Cited by in corpus (13)

• Photoassociation of ultracold LiRb* molecules: observation of high efficiency and unitarity-limited rate saturation
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• Formation of ultracold ${}^7$Li${}^{85}$Rb molecules in the lowest triplet electronic state by photoassociation and their detection by ionization spectroscopy
• Two-photon photoassociation spectroscopy of an ultracold heteronuclear molecule
• Formation of deeply bound ultracold LiRb molecules via photoassociation near the Li 2S${}_{1/2}$ + Rb 5P${}_{3/2}$ asymptote
• Quantum Defect Theory description of weakly bound levels and Feshbach resonances in LiRb
• Proposal to directly observe the Kondo effect through enhanced photo-induced scattering of cold fermionic and bosonic atoms
• Cross-dimensional relaxation of ${}^7$Li-${}^{87}$Rb atomic gas mixtures in a spherical-quadrupole magnetic trap
• The $d{}^3\Pi$ state of LiRb
• The $C{}^1{\Sigma }^{+}$, $A{}^1{\Sigma }^{+}$, and $b{}^3{\Pi }_{0^{+}}$ states of LiRb
• Spin liquid phases of Mott insulating ultracold bosons
• Genetics-based deperturbation analysis for the spin-orbit coupled ${\mathrm{A}}^1{\Sigma }^{+}$ and ${\mathrm{b}}^3{\Pi }_{0^{+}}$ states of LiRb
• Extracting molecular potentials from insufficient spectroscopic information