Feshbach-Resonance-Enhanced Coherent Atom-Molecule Conversion with Ultra-Narrow Photoassociation Resonance

Abstract

We reveal the existence of high-density Feshbach resonances in the collision between the ground and metastable states of ${}^{171}$Yb and coherently produce the associated Feshbach molecules by photoassociation. The extremely small transition rate is overcome by the enhanced Franck-Condon factor of the weakly bound Feshbach molecule, allowing us to observe Rabi oscillations with long decay time between an atom pair and a molecule in an optical lattice. We also perform the precision measurement of the binding energies, which characterizes the observed resonances. The ultra-narrow photoassociation will be a basis for practical implementation of optical Feshbach resonances.

7 pages, 7 figures