Photoassociation of spin polarized Chromium

Abstract

We report the homonuclear photoassociation (PA) of ultracold ${}^{52}\mathrm{Cr}$ atoms in an optical dipole trap. This constitutes the first measurement of PA in an element with total electron spin $\tilde{S}>1$. Although Cr, with its ${}^7{\mathrm{S}}_3$ ground and ${}^7{\mathrm{P}}_{4,3,2}$ excited states, is expected to have a complicated PA spectrum we show that a spin polarized cloud exhibits a remarkably simple PA spectrum when circularly polarized light is applied. Over a scan range of 20 GHz below the ${}^7{\mathrm{P}}_3$ asymptote we observe two distinct vibrational series each following a LeRoy-Bernstein law for a $C_3/R^3$ potential with excellent agreement. We determine the $C_3$ coefficients of the Hund's case c) relativistic adiabatic potentials to be -1.83$\pm$0.02 a.u. and -1.46$\pm$0.01a.u.. Theoretical non-rotating Movre-Pichler calculations enable a first assignment of the series to $\Omega =6_u$ and $5_g$ potential energy curves. In a different set of experiments we disturb the selection rules by a transverse magnetic field which leads to additional PA series.

References in corpus (8)

• Bose-Einstein Condensation of Erbium
• Observing the Rosensweig instability of a quantum ferrofluid
• All-Optical Production of Chromium Bose-Einstein Condensates
• Emergence of chaotic scattering in ultracold Er and Dy
• Narrow Line Photoassociation in an Optical Lattice
• Ultracold Dipolar Molecules Composed of Strongly Magnetic Atoms
• Optical Feshbach resonances: Field-dressed theory and comparison with experiments
• Mass scaling and non-adiabatic effects in photoassociation spectroscopy of ultracold strontium atoms

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Highly polar molecules consisting of a copper or silver atom interacting with an alkali-metal or alkaline-earth-metal atom
• Magnetically tunable Feshbach resonances in ultracold gases of europium atoms and mixtures of europium and alkali-metal atoms
• Purely long-range polar molecules composed of identical lanthanide atoms