Formation of ultracold ${}^7$Li${}^{85}$Rb molecules in the lowest triplet electronic state by photoassociation and their detection by ionization spectroscopy

Abstract

We report the formation of ultracold ${}^7$Li${}^{85}$Rb molecules in the $a^3{\Sigma }^{+}$ electronic state by photoassociation (PA) and their detection via resonantly enhanced multiphoton ionization (REMPI). With our dual-species Li and Rb magneto-optical trap (MOT) apparatus, we detect PA resonances with binding energies up to ~62 cm${}^{-1}$ below the ${}^7$Li 2s ${}^2{S}_{1/2}$ $+$ ${}^{85}$Rb 5p ${}^2{P}_{1/2}$ asymptote. In addition, we use REMPI spectroscopy to probe the $a^3{\Sigma }^{+}$ state and excited electronic $3^3\Pi$ and $4^3{\Sigma }^{+}$ states, and identify $a^3{\Sigma }^{+}(v"=7-13)$, $3^3\Pi (v_{\Pi }^{\prime }=0-10)$ and $4^3{\Sigma }^{+}(v_{\Sigma }^{\prime }=0-5)$ vibrational levels. Our line assignments agree well with ab initio calculations. These preliminary spectroscopic studies on previously unobserved electronic states are crucial to discovering transition pathways for transferring ultracold LiRb molecules created via PA to deeply bound rovibrational levels of the electronic ground state.

23 pages, 7 figures, 4 tables

References in corpus (3)

• Ultracold dense gas of deeply bound heteronuclear molecules
• Ultracold molecules: new probes on the variation of fundamental constants
• Formation of ultracold ${}^7$Li${}^{85}$Rb molecules in the lowest triplet electronic state by photoassociation and their detection by ionization spectroscopy

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Strongly interacting ultracold polar molecules
• 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
• Short-range Photoassociation of LiRb
• The $C{}^1{\Sigma }^{+}$, $A{}^1{\Sigma }^{+}$, and $b{}^3{\Pi }_{0^{+}}$ states of LiRb
• The $d{}^3\Pi$ state of LiRb