Preparation of a quantum degenerate mixture of ${}^{23}$Na${}^{40}$K molecules and ${}^{40}$K atoms

Abstract

We report on the preparation of a quantum degenerate mixture of ${}^{23}$Na${}^{40}$K molecules and ${}^{40}$K atoms. A deeply degenerate atomic mixture of ${}^{23}$Na and ${}^{40}$K atoms with a large number ratio ($N_F/N_B\approx 6$) is prepared by the mode-matching loading of atoms from a cloverleaf-type magnetic trap into a large-volume horizontal optical dipole trap and evaporative cooling in a large-volume three-beam optical dipole trap. About $3.0\times 10^4$ ${}^{23}$Na${}^{40}$K ground-state molecules are created through magneto-association followed by stimulated adiabatic Raman passage. The 2D density distribution of the molecules is fit to the Fermi-Dirac distribution with $T/T_F\approx 0.4-0.5$. In the atom-molecule mixture, the elastic collisions provide a thermalization mechanism for the molecules. In a few tens of milliseconds which are larger than the typical thermalization time, the degeneracy of the molecules is maintained, which may be due to the Pauli exclusion principle. The quantum degenerate mixture of ${}^{23}$Na${}^{40}$K molecules and ${}^{40}$K atoms can be used to study strongly interacting atom-molecule mixtures and to prepare ultracold triatomic molecular gases.

5 pages, 6 figures

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• Effective potential and superfluidity of microwave-dressed polar molecules
• Observation of photoassociation resonances in ultracold atom-molecule collisions
• Collisions of Spin-polarized YO Molecules for Single Partial Waves
• Intercombination line photoassociation spectroscopy of ${}^{87}$Rb${}^{170}$Yb
• Cold hybrid electrical-optical ion trap
• Formation of ultracold ${}^{39}$K${}^{133}$Cs Feshbach molecules
• Strongly dipolar molecular Bose-Einstein condensates: From few- to many-body physics