Creation of an Ultracold Gas of Ground-State Dipolar ^{23}Na^{87}Rb Molecules.
We report the successful production of an ultracold sample of absolute ground-state ^{23}Na^{87}Rb molecules. Starting from weakly bound Feshbach molecules formed via magnetoassociation, the lowest rovibrational and hyperfine level of the electronic ground state is populated following a high-efficiency and high-resolution two-photon Raman process. The high-purity absolute ground-state samples have up to 8000 molecules and densities of over 10^{11}  cm^{-3}. By measuring the Stark shifts induced by external electric fields, we determined the permanent electric dipole moment of the absolute ground-state ^{23}Na^{87}Rb and demonstrated the capability of inducing an effective dipole moment over 1 D. Bimolecular reaction between ground-state ^{23}Na^{87}Rb molecules is endothermic, but we still observed a rather fast decay of the molecular sample. Our results pave the way toward investigation of ultracold molecular collisions in a fully controlled manner and possibly to quantum gases of ultracold bosonic molecules with strong dipolar interactions.
Department of Physics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
Mingyang
M
Guo
Department of Physics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
Bing
B
Zhu
Department of Physics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
Bo
B
Lu
Department of Physics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
Xin
X
Ye
Department of Physics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
Fudong
F
Wang
Laboratoire Aimé Cotton, CNRS, Université Paris-Sud, ENS Cachan, Université Paris-Saclay, 91405 Orsay Cedex, France.
Romain
R
Vexiau
Laboratoire Aimé Cotton, CNRS, Université Paris-Sud, ENS Cachan, Université Paris-Saclay, 91405 Orsay Cedex, France.
Nadia
N
Bouloufa-Maafa
Laboratoire Aimé Cotton, CNRS, Université Paris-Sud, ENS Cachan, Université Paris-Saclay, 91405 Orsay Cedex, France.
Goulven
G
Quéméner
Laboratoire Aimé Cotton, CNRS, Université Paris-Sud, ENS Cachan, Université Paris-Saclay, 91405 Orsay Cedex, France.
Olivier
O
Dulieu
Department of Physics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.|The Chinese University of Hong Kong Shenzhen Research Institute, 518057, Shenzhen, China.
Dajun
D
Wang