Short-pulse photoassociation in rubidium below the D1 line

Christiane P. Koch, Ronnie Kosloff, and Françoise Masnou-Seeuws
Phys. Rev. A 73, 043409 – Published 13 April 2006

Abstract

Photoassociation of two ultracold rubidium atoms and the subsequent formation of stable molecules in the singlet ground and lowest triplet states is investigated theoretically. The method employs laser pulses inducing transitions via excited states correlated to the 5S+5P12 asymptote. Weakly bound molecules in the singlet ground or lowest triplet state can be created by a single pulse while the formation of more deeply bound molecules requires a two-color pump-dump scenario. More deeply bound molecules in the singlet ground or lowest triplet state can be produced only if efficient mechanisms for both pump and dump steps exist. While long-range 1R3 potentials allow for efficient photoassociation, stabilization is facilitated by the resonant spin-orbit coupling of the 0u+ states. Molecules in the singlet ground state bound by a few wave numbers can thus be formed. This provides a promising first step toward ground-state molecules which are ultracold in both translational and vibrational degrees of freedom.

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  • Received 28 November 2005

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.73.043409

©2006 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Christiane P. Koch* and Ronnie Kosloff

  • Department of Physical Chemistry and The Fritz Haber Research Center, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem 91904, Israel

Françoise Masnou-Seeuws

  • Laboratoire Aimé Cotton, CNRS, Bât. 505, Campus d’Orsay, 91405 Orsay Cedex, France

  • *Electronic address: ckoch@fh.huji.ac.il

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Issue

Vol. 73, Iss. 4 — April 2006

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