Observation of Bose-Einstein Condensation of Dipolar Molecules

Abstract

Ensembles of particles governed by quantum mechanical laws exhibit fascinating emergent behavior. Atomic quantum gases, liquid helium, and electrons in quantum materials all show distinct properties due to their composition and interactions. Quantum degenerate samples of bosonic dipolar molecules promise the realization of novel phases of matter with tunable dipolar interactions and new avenues for quantum simulation and quantum computation. However, rapid losses, even when reduced through collisional shielding techniques, have so far prevented cooling to a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). In this work, we report on the realization of a BEC of dipolar molecules. By strongly suppressing two- and three-body losses via enhanced collisional shielding, we evaporatively cool sodium-cesium (NaCs) molecules to quantum degeneracy. The BEC reveals itself via a bimodal distribution and a phase-space-density exceeding one. BECs with a condensate fraction of 60(10) % and a temperature of 6(2) nK are created and found to be stable with a lifetime close to 2 seconds. This work opens the door to the exploration of dipolar quantum matter in regimes that have been inaccessible so far, promising the creation of exotic dipolar droplets, self-organized crystal phases, and dipolar spin liquids in optical lattices.

10 pages, 7 figures

References in corpus (22)

• Quantum phase transition from a superfluid to a Mott insulator in a gas of ultracold atoms
• A High Phase-Space-Density Gas of Polar Molecules
• Quantum-fluctuation-driven crossover from a dilute Bose-Einstein condensate to a macro-droplet in a dipolar quantum fluid
• Ultracold dense samples of dipolar RbCs molecules in the rovibrational and hyperfine ground state
• Strongly correlated 2D quantum phases with cold polar molecules: controlling the shape of the interaction potential
• Ultracold Dipolar Gas of Fermionic ${}^{23}$Na${}^{40}$K Molecules in their Absolute Ground State
• Strong dipolar effects in a quantum ferrofluid
• Creation of ultracold ${}^{87}$RbCs molecules in the rovibrational ground state
• Transient supersolid properties in an array of dipolar quantum droplets
• Long-lived and transient supersolid behaviors in dipolar quantum gases
• Reactions of ultracold alkali metal dimers
• Cold polar molecules in 2D traps: Tailoring interactions with external fields for novel quantum phases
• Stable Topological Superfluid Phase of Ultracold Polar Fermionic Molecules
• Topological phases in ultracold polar-molecule quantum magnets
• Repulsive shield between polar molecules
• Collisions of ultracold ^{23}Na^{87}Rb molecules with controlled chemical reactivities
• Universal rates for reactive ultracold polar molecules in reduced dimensions
• Collisionally Stable Gas of Bosonic Dipolar Ground State Molecules
• Ultracold field-linked tetratomic molecules
• A High Phase-Space Density Gas of NaCs Feshbach Molecules
• Efficient Pathway to NaCs Ground State Molecules
• A planar cloverleaf antenna for the creation of circularly polarized microwave fields

Cited by in corpus (73)

• Quantum state manipulation and cooling of ultracold molecules
• Quantum mixtures of ultracold gases of neutral atoms
• Observation of generalized t-J spin dynamics with tunable dipolar interactions
• Quantum Gas Microscopy of Fermions in the Continuum
• Measuring pair correlations in Bose and Fermi gases via atom-resolved microscopy
• Excitations of a two-dimensional supersolid
• Double Microwave Shielding
• SU(N) magnetism with ultracold molecules
• Three-Body Recombination of Ultracold Microwave-Shielded Polar Molecules
• Production and stabilization of a spin mixture of ultracold dipolar Bose gases
• Enhanced quantum state transfer via feedforward cancellation of optical phase noise
• Laser cooling of a fermionic molecule
• Magneto-optical trapping of aluminum monofluoride
• Ultracold dipolar bosons trapped in atomtronic circuits
• Collisions of Spin-polarized YO Molecules for Single Partial Waves
• Exploring the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless Transition in a Two-dimensional Dipolar Bose Gas
• Realizing multiband states with ultracold dipolar quantum simulators
• Honeycomb supersolid -- Dirac points and shear-instability induced crystal transitions
• Anomalous dispersion of shear waves in dipolar supersolids
• SU($N$) symmetry with ultracold alkali dimers: weak dependence of scattering properties on hyperfine state
• Interaction quench of dipolar bosons in a one-dimensional optical lattice
• Nonequilibrium quench dynamics of Bose-Einstein condensates of microwave-shielded polar molecules
• Light interactions with polar quantum systems
• Ultracold Interactions between Ions and Polar Molecules
• Expansion of strongly interacting dipolar bosons in 1D optical lattices
• Dissipative Superfluidity in a Molecular Bose-Einstein Condensate
• Thermal behavior of Bose-Einstein condensates of polar molecules
• Rotational properties of two interacting cold polar molecules: linear, symmetric, and asymmetric tops
• Synthetic Mutual Gauge Field in Microwave-Shielded Polar Molecular Gases
• Dressed-State Spectroscopy and Magic Trapping of Microwave-Shielded NaCs Molecules
• Effective potential and scattering length of shielding polar molecules
• Macroscopic Particle Transport in Dissipative Long-Range Bosonic Systems
• Broad Feshbach resonance with a large background scattering length in a fermionic atom-molecule mixture
• Simulating Quantum Turbulence with Matrix Product States
• Creating and melting a supersolid by heating a quantum dipolar system
• Rayleigh-Taylor, Kelvin-Helmholtz and immiscible to miscible quenching instabilities in binary Bose-Einstein condensates
• Atom-Molecule Superradiance and Entanglement with Cavity-Mediated Three-Body Interactions
• Dipolar magnetostirring protocol for three-well atomtronic circuits
• Tightly bound solitons and vortices in three-dimensional bosonic condensates with the electromagnetically-induced gravity
• Fate of thermalization of ultracold fermions with two-body dissipation
• Roadmap to vortex nucleation below critical rotation frequency in a dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate
• Vortex to Rotons Transition in Dipolar Bose-Einstein Condensates
• Multi-state detection and spatial addressing in a microscope for ultracold molecules
• Ground-state selection via many-body superradiant decay
• Harvesting entanglement from the Lorentz-violating quantum field vacuum in a dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate
• Localized States in Dipolar Bose-Einstein Condensates: To be or not to be of second order
• Hartree-Fock approximation for bosons with symmetry-adapted variational wave functions
• Rigorous quantum calculations for atom-molecule chemical reactions in electric fields: from single to multiple partial wave regimes
• Symmetry and Self-Bound Droplets in Dipolar Molecular Gases
• Optically trapped Feshbach molecules of fermionic ${}^{161}$Dy and ${}^{40}$K: Role of light-induced and collisional losses
• Formation of ultracold ${}^{39}$K${}^{133}$Cs Feshbach molecules
• Ultracold coherent control of molecular collisions at a Förster resonance
• Density engineering via inter-condensate dipole-dipole interactions
• Quasiparticle spectra of mixtures of dipolar and non-dipolar condensates at zero and finite temperatures
• Dynamical signatures of superfluidity and shear rigidity in different phases of a dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate
• Strongly dipolar molecular Bose-Einstein condensates: From few- to many-body physics
• Efimov Effect in Ultracold Microwave-Shielded Polar Molecules
• First-order phase transition in atom-molecule quantum degenerate mixtures with coherent three-body recombination
• Excitations and anisotropic sound in planar dipolar supersolids with tilted dipoles
• Preparation of quasi-two-dimensional Bose mixture of ultracold ${}^{23}$Na and ${}^{87}$Rb atoms
• Scaling Laws Governing the Collapse of a Bose-Einstein Condensate
• Properties of a static dipolar impurity in a 2D dipolar BEC
• Electric-Field Control of Josephson Oscillations in Dipolar Bose-Einstein Condensates
• Delta-Kick Collimation of Heteronuclear Feshbach Molecules
• Diminished quantum depletion and correlated droplets in one-dimensional dipolar Bose gas
• Competition of light- and phonon-dressing in microwave-dressed Bose polarons
• Trion ordering in the attractive three-color Hubbard model on a $\pi$-flux square lattice
• Trion formation and ordering in the attractive SU(3) Fermi-Hubbard model
• Hyperfine van der Waals repulsion between open-shell polar molecules
• Dipolar optimal control of entangled current states
• Attractive and repulsive angulons in superfluid environments
• Ultracold high-spin $\Sigma$-state polar molecules for new physics searches
• Formation of ultracold triatomic molecules by electric microwave association