Probing the axis alignment of an ultracold spin-polarized ${\text{Rb}}_2$ molecule

Abstract

We present a novel method for probing the alignment of the molecular axis of an ultracold, nonpolar dimer. These results are obtained using diatomic ${}^{87}{\text{Rb}}_2$ molecules in the vibrational ground state of the lowest triplet potential $a^3{\Sigma }_u^{+}$ trapped in a 3D optical lattice. We measure the molecular polarizabilities, which are directly linked to the alignment, along each of the $x$, $y$, and $z$ directions of the lab coordinate system. By preparing the molecules in various, precisely defined rotational quantum states we can control the degree of alignment of the molecular axis with high precision over a large range. Furthermore, we derive the dynamical polarizabilities for a laser wavelength of $1064.5\text{nm}$ parallel and orthogonal to the molecular axis of the dimer, ${\alpha }_{\parallel }=(8.9\pm 0.9)\times 10^3\text{a.u.}$ and ${\alpha }_{\perp }=(0.9\pm 0.4)\times 10^3\text{a.u.}$, respectively. Our findings highlight that the depth of an optical lattice strongly depends on the rotational state of the molecule which has to be considered in collision experiments. The present work paves the way for reaction studies between aligned molecules in the ultracold temperature regime.

6 pages and 4 figures including supplemental material

References in corpus (4)

• Ultracold Molecules in the Ro-Vibrational Triplet Ground State
• Hyperfine, rotational, and vibrational structure of the triplet ground state of Rb molecules
• Anisotropic Polarizability of Ultracold Polar ${}^{40}$K${}^{87}$Rb Molecules
• Probing the axis alignment of an ultracold spin-polarized ${\text{Rb}}_2$ molecule

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Anisotropic polarizability of erbium atoms
• AC Stark Effect in Ultracold Polar RbCs Molecules
• Probing the axis alignment of an ultracold spin-polarized ${\text{Rb}}_2$ molecule
• Directional Quantum-Controlled Chemistry: Generating Aligned Ultracold Molecules via Photoassociation
• Nondestructive dispersive imaging of rotationally excited ultracold molecules