Coherent optical creation of a single molecule

Abstract

We report coherent association of atoms into a single weakly bound NaCs molecule in an optical tweezer through an optical Raman transition. The Raman technique uses a deeply bound electronic excited intermediate state to achieve a large transition dipole moment while reducing photon scattering. Starting from two atoms in their relative motional ground state, we achieve an optical transfer efficiency of 69%. The molecules have a binding energy of 770.2MHz at 8.83(2)G. This technique does not rely on Feshbach resonances or narrow excited-state lines and may allow a wide range of molecular species to be assembled atom-by-atom.

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• Bimolecular chemistry in the ultracold regime
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• Diatomic molecules of alkali-metal and alkaline-earth-metal atoms: interaction potentials, dipole moments, and polarizabilities
• Optical Trapping of a Polyatomic Molecule in an $\ell$-Type Parity Doublet State
• A hybrid atom tweezer array of nuclear spin and optical clock qubits
• Interspecies Förster resonances of Rb-Cs Rydberg $d$-states for enhanced multi-qubit gate fidelities
• Theory of angular momentum transfer from light to molecules
• Triatomic Photoassociation in an Ultracold Atom-Molecule Collision
• Probing the interaction energy of two ${}^{85}$Rb atoms in an optical tweezer via spin-motion coupling