A Feshbach resonance in collisions between ultracold ground state molecules

Abstract

Collisional resonances are an important tool which has been used to modify interactions in ultracold gases, for realizing novel Hamiltonians in quantum simulations, for creating molecules from atomic gases and for controlling chemical reactions. So far, such resonances have been observed for atom-atom collisions, atom-molecule collisions and collisions between Feshbach molecules which are very weakly bound. Whether such resonances exist for ultracold ground state molecules has been debated due to the possibly high density of states and/or rapid decay of the resonant complex. Here we report a very pronounced and narrow (25 mG) Feshbach resonance in collisions between two ground state NaLi molecules. This molecular Feshbach resonance has two special characteristics. First, the collisional loss rate is enhanced by more than two orders of magnitude above the background loss rate which is saturated at the $p$-wave universal value, due to strong chemical reactivity. Second, the resonance is located at a magnetic field where two open channels become nearly degenerate. This implies the intermediate complex predominantly decays to the second open channel. We describe the resonant loss feature using a model with coupled modes which is analogous to a Fabry-Pérot cavity. Our observations prove the existence of long-lived coherent intermediate complexes even in systems without reaction barriers and open up the possibility of coherent control of chemical reactions.

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• Spectrum of Feshbach resonances in NaLi $+$ Na collisions
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• Efficient Pathway to NaCs Ground State Molecules
• Magnetic Feshbach resonances in ultracold atom-molecule collisions
• Quantum control of ion-atom collisions beyond the ultracold regime
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• Observation of modulation-induced Feshbach resonance
• Rigorous quantum calculations for atom-molecule chemical reactions in electric fields: from single to multiple partial wave regimes
• Automated Graph-Based Detection of Quantum Control Schemes: Application to Molecular Laser Cooling
• Strongly dipolar molecular Bose-Einstein condensates: From few- to many-body physics
• Molecular resonance identification in complex absorbing potentials via integrated quantum computing and high-throughput computing