Controlled state-to-state atom-exchange reaction in an ultracold atom-dimer mixture

Abstract

Ultracold molecules offer remarkable opportunities to study chemical reactions at nearly zero temperature. Although significant progresses have been achieved in exploring ultracold bimolecular reactions, the investigations are usually limited to measurements of the overall loss rates of the reactants. Detection of the reaction products will shed new light on understanding the reaction mechanism and provide a unique opportunity to study the state-to-state reaction dynamics. Here we report on the direct observation of an exoergic atom-exchange reaction in an ultracold atom-dimer mixture. Both the atom and molecule products are observed and the quantum states are characterized. By changing the magnetic field, the reaction can be switched on or off, and the reaction rate can be controlled. The reaction is efficient and we have measured a state-to-state reaction rate of up to $1.1(3)\times 10^{-9}$cm${}^3/$s from the time evolution of the reactants and products. Our work represents the realization of a controlled quantum state selected/resolved ultracold reaction. The atom-exchange reaction observed is also an effective spin-exchange interaction between the Feshbach molecules and the fermionic atoms and may be exploited to implement quantum simulations of the Kondo effect with ultracold atoms and molecules.

11 pages, 13 figures

References in corpus (7)

• Ultracold heteronuclear molecules in a 3D optical lattice
• Ultracold Fermionic Feshbach Molecules of ${}^{23}$Na${}^{40}$K
• Collisional stability of fermionic Feshbach molecules
• Inelastic collisions of ultra-cold heteronuclear molecules in an optical trap
• Atom-Dimer Scattering in a Three-Component Fermi Gas
• Radio-Frequency Transitions on Weakly-Bound Ultracold Molecules
• Universality of weakly bound dimers and Efimov trimers close to Li-Cs Feshbach resonances

Cited by in corpus (31)

• Observation of magnetically tunable Feshbach resonances in ultracold ${}^{23}$Na${}^{40}$K+${}^{40}$K collisions
• Bimolecular chemistry in the ultracold regime
• Precision test of statistical dynamics with state-to-state ultracold chemistry
• Unravelling the stereodynamics of cold HD-H2 collisions
• Magnetic Feshbach resonances in collisions of ${}^{23}$Na${}^{40}$K with ${}^{40}$K
• Long-lived complexes and signatures of chaos in ultracold K2+Rb collisions
• Observation of interference between resonant and detuned STIRAP in the adiabatic creation of ${}^{23}$Na${}^{40}$K molecules
• Many-body Chemical Reactions in a Quantum Degenerate Gas
• Complete quantum coherent control of ultracold molecular collisions
• Reaction kinetics of ultracold molecule-molecule collisions
• Quantum spin state selectivity and magnetic tuning of ultracold chemical reactions of triplet alkali-metal dimers with alkali-metal atoms
• Steering ultracold reactions through long-lived transient intermediates
• Molecular Collisions: from Near-cold to Ultra-cold
• Signature of the $s$-wave regime high above ultralow temperatures
• Feshbach Loss Spectroscopy in an Ultracold ${}^{23}$Na and ${}^{40}$K Mixture
• Probing ultracold chemistry using ion spectrometry
• Symmetry and the Geometric Phase in Ultracold Hydrogen-Exchange Reactions
• Magnetic quantum number resolved state-to-state chemistry
• Formation of ultracold weakly bound dimers of bosonic ${}^{23}{\text{Na}}^{39}\text{K}$
• Atom-dimer scattering in heteronuclear mixture with finite intra-species scattering length
• State-to-state endothermic and nearly thermoneutral reactions in an ultracold atom-dimer mixture
• Observation of Bose-enhanced photoassociation products
• Cold atom-dimer reaction rates with ${}^4$He, ${}^{6,7}$Li and ${}^{23}$Na
• Miscibility of Binary Bose-Einstein Condensates with $p$-wave Interaction
• Dynamical excitation processes and correlations of three-body two-dimensional mixtures
• Controllable atomic collision in a tight optical dipole trap
• Near-threshold scaling of resonant inelastic collisions at ultralow temperatures
• Product-state distribution after isotopic substitution in ultracold atom-molecule collisions
• Emergence of N-body tunable interactions in universal few-atom system
• Non-adiabatic quantum interference effects and chaoticity in the ultracold Li + LiNa $\to$ Li${}_2$ + Na reaction
• First-order phase transition in atom-molecule quantum degenerate mixtures with coherent three-body recombination