Cavity-controlled ultracold chemistry

Abstract

Ultracold ground-state molecules can be formed from ultracold atoms via photoassociation followed by a spontaneous emission process. Typically, the molecular products are distributed over a range of final states. Here, we propose to use an optical cavity with high cooperativity to selectively enhance the population of a pre-determined final state by controlling the spontaneous emission. During this process, a photon will be emitted into the cavity mode. Detection of this photon heralds a single reaction. We discuss the efficiency and the dynamics of cavity-assisted molecule formation in the frame of realistic parameters that can be achieved in current ultracold-atom setups. In particular, we consider the production of Rb${}_2$ molecules in the $a^3{\Sigma }_u$ triplet ground state. Moreover, when working with more than two atoms in the cavity, collective enhancement effects in chemistry should be observable.

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• Fabrication of Customized, Low-Loss Optical Resonators by Combination of FIB-Milling and CO${}_2$ Laser Ablation
• Resonator-assisted single molecule quantum state detection
• Cavity-enabled real-time observation of individual atomic collisions
• Ground-state selection via many-body superradiant decay