Two-photon pathway to ultracold ground state molecules of [superscript 23]Na [superscript 40]K
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Author(s)
Park, Jee Woo
Will, Sebastian
Zwierlein, Martin Wolfram
Date Issued
July 2015
Journal
New Journal of Physics
Publisher
IOP Publishing
Citation
Park, Jee Woo, Sebastian A Will, and Martin W Zwierlein. “Two-Photon Pathway to Ultracold Ground State Molecules of [superscript 23]Na [superscript 40]K.” New J. Phys. 17, no. 7 (July 1, 2015): 075016. © 2015 IOP Publishing Ltd and Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft
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Final published version
Abstract
We report on high-resolution spectroscopy of ultracold fermionic [superscript 23]Na[superscript 40]K Feshbach molecules, and identify a two-photon pathway to the rovibrational singlet ground state via a resonantly mixed B[superscript 1]Π ~ c[superscript 3]Σ[superscript +]intermediate state. Photoassociation in a [superscript 23]Na–[superscript 40]K atomic mixture and one-photon spectroscopy on [superscript 23]Na[superscript 40]K Feshbach molecules reveal about 20 vibrational levels of the electronically excited c[superscript 3]Σ[superscript +]state. Two of these levels are found to be strongly perturbed by nearby B[superscript 1]Π levels via spin–orbit coupling, resulting in additional lines of dominant singlet character in the perturbed complex B[superscript 1}Π |v = 4〉 ~ c[superscript 3]∑[superscript +] v = 25〉, or of resonantly mixed character in B[superscript 1}Π |v = 12〉 ~ c[superscript 3]∑[superscript +] v = 35〉. The dominantly singlet level is used to locate the absolute rovibrational singlet ground state X[superscript 1]∑[superscript +] |v = 0, J = 0〉 via Autler–Townes spectroscopy. We demonstrate coherent two-photon coupling via dark state spectroscopy between the predominantly triplet Feshbach molecular state and the singlet ground state. Its binding energy is measured to be 5212.0447(1) cm[superscript −1], a thousand-fold improvement in accuracy compared to previous determinations. In their absolute singlet ground state, [superscript 23]Na[superscript 40]K molecules are chemically stable under binary collisions and possess a large electric dipole moment of 2.72 Debye. Our work thus paves the way towards the creation of strongly dipolar Fermi gases of NaK molecules.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Research Laboratory of Electronics
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630/17/7/075016
