Analysis of Photoassociation Spectra for Giant Helium Dimers

Abstract

We perform a theoretical analysis to interpret the spectra of purely long-range helium dimers produced by photoassociation (PA) in an ultra-cold gas of metastable helium atoms. The experimental spectrum obtained with the PA laser tuned closed to the $2^3{S}_1\leftrightarrow 2^3{P}_0$ atomic line has been reported in a previous Letter. Here, we first focus on the corrections to be applied to the measured resonance frequencies in order to infer the molecular binding energies. We then present a calculation of the vibrational spectra for the purely long-range molecular states, using adiabatic potentials obtained from perturbation theory. With retardation effects taken into account, the agreement between experimental and theoretical determinations of the spectrum for the $0_u^{+}$ purely long-range potential well is very good. The results yield a determination of the lifetime of the $2^{3}P$ atomic state.

References in corpus (5)

• Bose-Einstein Condensation of Metastable Helium
• Resonant dipole-dipole interaction in the presence of dispersing and absorbing surroundings
• Macrodimers: ultralong range Rydberg molecules
• Ionization rates in a Bose-Einstein condensate of metastable Helium
• Purely-long-range bound states of He$(2s^{3}S)+$He$(2p^{3}P)$

Cited by in corpus (12)

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• Long-range interactions between a He($2^{3}S$) atom and a He($2^{3}P$) atom for like isotopes
• Prospects for measurement and control of the scattering length of metastable helium using photoassociation techniques
• Analysis of light-induced frequency shifts in the photoassociation of ultracold metastable helium atoms
• Rotationally induced Penning ionization of ultracold photoassociated helium dimers
• Spin-dipole induced lifetime of the least-bound quintet sigma state of He(2S)+He(2S)
• Laser Intensity Dependence of Photoassociation in Ultracold Metastable Helium
• Effects of non-adiabatic and Coriolis couplings on the bound states of He(2 ^3S)+He(2 ^3P)
• Photoassociation spectroscopy of ultracold metastable ^3He dimers
• On the Role of Penning Ionization in Photoassociation Spectroscopy
• An accurate spectral method for solving the Schroedinger equation