Collisions of ultracold ^{23}Na^{87}Rb molecules with controlled chemical reactivities

Abstract

The collision of molecules at ultracold temperatures is of great importance for understanding the chemical interactions at the quantum regime. While much theoretical work has been devoted to this, experimental data are only available sparsely mainly due to the difficulty in producing ground-state molecules at ultracold temperatures. We report here the creation of optically trapped samples of ground-state bosonic sodium-rubidium molecules with precisely controlled internal states and, enabled by this, a detailed study on the inelastic loss with and without the NaRb + NaRb $\to$ Na${}_2$ + Rb${}_2$ chemical reaction. Contrary to intuitive expectations, we observed very similar loss and heating, regardless of the chemical reactivities. In addition, as evidenced by the reducing loss rate constants with increasing temperatures, we found that these collisions are already outside the Wigner region even though the sample temperatures are sub-microkelvin. Our measurement agrees semi-quantitatively with models based on long-range interactions, but calls for a deeper understanding on the short-range physics for a more complete interpretation.

References in corpus (11)

• Ultracold dense samples of dipolar RbCs molecules in the rovibrational and hyperfine ground state
• Ultracold Dipolar Gas of Fermionic ${}^{23}$Na${}^{40}$K Molecules in their Absolute Ground State
• Creation of ultracold ${}^{87}$RbCs molecules in the rovibrational ground state
• Three-body recombination at large scattering lengths in an ultracold atomic gas
• Reactions of ultracold alkali metal dimers
• Strong dependence of ultracold chemical rates on electric dipole moments
• Universal model for exoergic bimolecular reactions and inelastic processes
• Formation of Ultracold NaRb Feshbach Molecules
• Van der Waals coefficients for systems with ultracold polar alkali-metal molecules
• Tuning ultracold collisions of excited rotational dipolar molecules
• Statistical product distributions for ultracold reactions in external fields

Cited by in corpus (51)

• Observation of Bose-Einstein Condensation of Dipolar Molecules
• Observation of Collisions between Two Ultracold Ground-State CaF Molecules
• Loss of ultracold RbCs molecules via optical excitation of long-lived two-body collision complexes
• Quantum state manipulation and cooling of ultracold molecules
• Bimolecular chemistry in the ultracold regime
• Rotational Coherence Times of Polar Molecules in Optical Tweezers
• Collisions of ultracold molecules in bright and dark optical dipole traps
• Self-bound dipolar droplets and supersolids in molecular Bose-Einstein condensates
• Control of reactive collisions by quantum interference
• Probing photoinduced two-body loss of ultracold non-reactive bosonic ${}^{23}$Na${}^{87}$Rb and ${}^{23}$Na${}^{39}$K molecules
• Ultracold Sticky Collisions: Theoretical and Experimental Status
• Microwave shielding of bosonic NaRb molecules
• Resonant dipolar collisions of ultracold molecules induced by microwave dressing
• Optical shielding of destructive chemical reactions between ultracold ground-state NaRb molecules
• Unified model of ultracold molecular collisions
• Diatomic molecules of alkali-metal and alkaline-earth-metal atoms: interaction potentials, dipole moments, and polarizabilities
• Seconds-scale coherence on nuclear spin transitions of ultracold polar molecules in 3D optical lattices
• Spectroscopy on the $A^1\Pi \leftarrow X^1{\Sigma }^{+}$ Transition of Buffer-Gas Cooled AlCl
• Steering ultracold reactions through long-lived transient intermediates
• Efficient conversion of closed-channel dominated Feshbach molecules of ${}^{23}$Na${}^{40}$K to their absolute ground state
• Resonant and first-order dipolar interactions between ultracold molecules in static and microwave electric fields
• Molecular Collisions: from Near-cold to Ultra-cold
• Collisional losses of ultracold molecules due to intermediate complex formation
• Resonant control of elastic collisions between ${}^{23}$Na${}^{40}$K molecules and ${}^{40}$K atoms
• Double Microwave Shielding
• Observation of resonant dipolar collisions in ultracold ${}^{23}$Na${}^{87}$Rb rotational mixtures
• Efficient Pathway to NaCs Ground State Molecules
• Low-energy collisions between carbon atoms and oxygen molecules in a magnetic trap
• Observation of Microwave Shielding of Ultracold Molecules
• Rotational-state dependence of interactions between polar molecules
• Electric field dependence of complex-dominated ultracold molecular collisions
• Anisotropic Polarizability of Ultracold Ground-state ${}^{23}$Na${}^{87}$Rb Molecules
• Detection of NaRb Feshbach molecule by photodissociation
• Microwave coherent control of ultracold ground-state molecules formed by short-range photoassociation
• Characterization of the lowest excited-state ro-vibrational level of ${}^{23}$Na${}^{87}$Rb
• Hyperfine structure of the ${\mathbf{A}}^1\mathbf{\Pi }$ state of AlCl and its relevance to laser cooling and trapping
• SU($N$) symmetry with ultracold alkali dimers: weak dependence of scattering properties on hyperfine state
• Dynamics of translational and rotational thermalization of AlF molecules via collisions with cryogenic helium
• Observation of collectivity enhanced magnetoassociation of ${}^6$Li in the quantum degenerate regime
• Robust storage qubits in ultracold polar molecules
• Dual-species Optical tweezer for Rb and K atoms
• Fate of thermalization of ultracold fermions with two-body dissipation
• Low Duty Cycle Pulsed UV Technique for Spectroscopy of Aluminum Monochloride
• Molecule-molecule and atom-molecule collisions with ultracold RbCs molecules
• Measurement of the Electric Dipole Moment of AlCl by Stark Level Spectroscopy
• Lossy Quantum Defect Theory of Ultracold Molecular Collisions
• Aspects of arbitrarily oriented dipoles scattering in plane: short-range interaction influence
• Van der Waals coefficients for interactions of dysprosium and erbium atoms with alkali-metal and alkaline-earth-metal atoms
• Model for two-body collisions between ultracold dipolar molecules around a Förster resonance in an electric field
• Hyperfine van der Waals repulsion between open-shell polar molecules
• Optimizing Pulsed-Laser Ablation Production of AlCl Molecules for Laser Cooling