Cold interactions between an Yb${}^{+}$ ion and a Li atom: Prospects for sympathetic cooling, radiative association, and Feshbach resonances

Abstract

The electronic structure of the (LiYb)${}^{+}$ molecular ion is investigated with two variants of the coupled cluster method restricted to single, double, and noniterative or linear triple excitations. Potential energy curves for the ground and excited states, permanent and transition electric dipole movements, and long-range interaction coefficients $C_4$ and $C_6$ are reported. The data is subsequently employed in scattering calculations and photoassociation studies. Feshbach resonances are shown to be measurable despite the ion's micromotion in the Paul trap. Molecular ions can be formed in their singlet electronic ground state by one-photon photoassociation and in triplet states by two-photon photoassociation; and control of cold atom-ion chemistry based on Feshbach resonances should be feasible. Conditions for sympathetic cooling of an Yb${}^{+}$ ion by an ultracold gas of Li atoms are found to be favorable in the temperature range of 10mK to 10nK; and further improvements using Feshbach resonances should be possible. Overall, these results suggest excellent prospects for building a quantum simulator with ultracold Yb${}^{+}$ ions and Li atoms.

13 pages, 13 figures, 2 tables

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• A trapped single ion inside a Bose-Einstein condensate
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• Quantum theory of ultracold atom-ion collisions
• Cold heteronuclear atom-ion collisions
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• 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
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Cited by in corpus (9)

• Observation of collisions between cold Li atoms and Yb${}^{+}$ ions
• Controlling the nature of a charged impurity in a bath of Feshbach dimers
• Ultracold ion-atom experiments: cooling, chemistry, and quantum effects
• Trapping Single Ions and Coulomb Crystals with Light Fields
• Experimental setup for studying an ultracold mixture of trapped Yb${}^{+}$-${}^6$Li
• Excitation-assisted nonadiabatic charge-transfer reaction in a mixed atom-ion system
• Enhanced coupling of electron and nuclear spins by quantum tunneling resonances
• Electric field dissociation of weakly bound molecular ions
• Cold interactions and chemical reactions of linear polyatomic anions with alkali-metal and alkaline-earth-metal atoms