Abstract
We theoretically study the dynamics of a trapped ion that is immersed in an ultracold gas of weakly bound atomic dimers created by a Feshbach resonance. Using quasiclassical simulations, we find a crossover from dimer dissociation to molecular ion formation depending on the binding energy of the dimers. The location of the crossover strongly depends on the collision energy and the time-dependent fields of the Paul trap. Deeply bound dimers lead to fast molecular ion formation, with rates approaching the Langevin collision rate . The kinetic energies of the created molecular ions have a median below , such that they will stay confined in the ion trap. We conclude that interacting ions and Feshbach molecules may provide an alternative approach towards the creation of ultracold molecular ions with applications in precision spectroscopy and quantum chemistry.
5 More- Received 29 May 2020
- Accepted 20 July 2020
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.2.033232
Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.
Published by the American Physical Society