Life and death of a cold BaRb${}^{+}$ molecule inside an ultracold cloud of Rb atoms

Abstract

We study the evolution of a single BaRb${}^{+}$ molecule while it continuously collides with ultracold Rb atoms. The initially weakly-bound molecule can undergo a sequence of elastic, inelastic, reactive, and radiative processes. We investigate these processes by developing methods for discriminating between different ion species, electronic states, and kinetic ion energy ranges. By comparing the measurements to model calculations we obtain a consistent description of the typical trajectory of the ion through the manifold of available atomic and molecular states. As a further result, we determine rates for collisional and radiative relaxation as well as photodissociation, spin-flip collisions, and chemical reactions.

19 pages, 17 figures, 2 tables

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Cited by in corpus (31)

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• Cold trapped molecular ions and hybrid platforms for ions and neutral particles
• Observation of Chemical Reactions between a Trapped Ion and Ultracold Feshbach Dimers
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• Cold chemistry: a few-body perspective on impurity physics of a single ion in an ultracold bath
• Three-body recombination in physical chemistry
• Observation of trap-assisted formation of atom-ion bound states
• Quantum-Logic Detection of Chemical Reactions
• Classical threshold law for the formation of van der Waals molecules
• Trap-assisted complexes in cold atom-ion collisions
• Direct observation of swap cooling in atom-ion collisions
• Spin-conservation propensity rule for three-body recombination of ultracold Rb atoms
• Generation of rotational ground state HD${}^{+}$ ions in an ion trap using a resonance-enhanced threshold photoionization process
• Buffer gas cooling of ions in time-dependent traps using ultracold atoms
• Four-body singlet potential energy surface for reactions of calcium monofluoride
• Ultracold ion-atom experiments: cooling, chemistry, and quantum effects
• Ion-atom-atom three-body recombination: from the cold to the thermal regime
• A mobile ion in a Fermi sea
• Electric field analysis in a cold-ion source using Stark spectroscopy of Rydberg atoms
• Energy-scaling of the product state distribution for three-body recombination of ultracold atoms
• Ion loss events in a cold Rb-Ca${}^{+}$ hybrid trap: photodissociation, black-body radiation and non-radiative charge exchange
• Ion solvation in atomic baths: from snowballs to polarons
• Ion-atom-atom three-body recombination in cold hydrogen and deuterium plasmas
• Modified mean field ansatz for charged polarons in a Bose-Einstein condensate
• Motional state analysis of a trapped ion by ultra-narrowband composite pulses
• Fermi polaron in atom-ion hybrid systems
• Ultracold Interactions between Ions and Polar Molecules
• Near-threshold scaling of resonant inelastic collisions at ultralow temperatures
• Quantum suppression of cold reactions far from the s-wave energy limit
• Electric field dissociation of weakly bound molecular ions
• Charge Exchange Dynamics in Cold Collisions of ${}^{40}$CaH${}^{+}$ and ${}^{39}$K