Abstract
Polar molecules have bright prospects for novel quantum gases with long-range and anisotropic interactions, and could find uses in quantum information science and in precision measurements. However, high-density clouds of ultracold polar molecules have so far not been produced. Here, we report a key step towards this goal. We start from an ultracold dense gas of loosely bound 40 K 87 Rb Feshbach molecules with typical binding energies of a few hundred kilohertz, and coherently transfer these molecules in a single transfer step into a vibrational level of the ground-state molecular potential bound by more than 10 GHz. Starting with a single initial state prepared with Feshbach association, we achieve a transfer efficiency of 84%. Given favourable Franck-Condon factors, the presented technique can be extended to access much more deeply bound vibrational levels and those exhibiting a significant dipole moment.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 622-626 |
Number of pages | 5 |
Journal | Nature Physics |
Volume | 4 |
Issue number | 8 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Aug 2008 |
Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We acknowledge financial support from NIST, NSF and DOE. K.-K.N. and B.N. acknowledge support from the NSF, S.O. from the Alexander-von-Humboldt Foundation and P.S.J. from the ONR. We thank D. Wang for stimulating discussions and C. Ospelkaus for critical reading of the manuscript.
Funding
We acknowledge financial support from NIST, NSF and DOE. K.-K.N. and B.N. acknowledge support from the NSF, S.O. from the Alexander-von-Humboldt Foundation and P.S.J. from the ONR. We thank D. Wang for stimulating discussions and C. Ospelkaus for critical reading of the manuscript.
Funders | Funder number |
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National Science Foundation | |
Office of Naval Research | |
U.S. Department of Energy | |
National Institute of Standards and Technology | |
Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung |