Enhancement of Ultracold Molecule Formation Using Shaped Nanosecond Frequency Chirps

Abstract

We demonstrate that judicious shaping of a nanosecond-time-scale frequency chirp can dramatically enhance the formation rate of ultracold ${}^{87}$Rb${}_2$ molecules. Starting with ultracold ${}^{87}$Rb atoms, we apply pulses of frequency-chirped light to first photoassociate the atoms into excited molecules and then, later in the chirp, de-excite these molecules into a high vibrational level of the lowest triplet state, $a{}^3{\Sigma }_u^{+}$. The enhancing chirp shape passes through the absorption and stimulated emission transitions relatively slowly, thus increasing their adiabaticity, but jumps quickly between them to minimize the effects of spontaneous emission. Comparisons with quantum simulations for various chirp shapes support this enhancement mechanism.

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• Efficient Formation of Ultracold Molecules with Chirped Nanosecond Pulses
• Photoassociation of ultracold long-range polyatomic molecules
• Directional Quantum-Controlled Chemistry: Generating Aligned Ultracold Molecules via Photoassociation
• Short-range photoassociation from the inner wall of the lowest triplet potential of ${}^{85}$Rb${}_2$
• Imaging recoil ions from optical collisions between ultracold, metastable neon isotopes
• Amplification of arbitrary frequency chirps of pulsed light on nanosecond timescales
• An approximation scheme and non-Hermitian re-normalization for description of atom-field system evolution
• Formation of deeply bound polar molecules combining pump-dump pulses with infrared radiation
• Coherent Control of Ultrafast Bond Making and Subsequent Molecular Dynamics: Demonstration of Final-State Branching Ratio Control
• Low-energy scatterings and pseudopotential of polarized quadrupoles
• Weak-Field Coherent Control of Ultrafast Molecule Making