Coherent optical creation of a single molecule
Atomic Physics
2021-09-22 v1 Quantum Gases
Chemical Physics
Abstract
We report coherent association of atoms into a single weakly bound NaCs molecule in an optical tweezer through an optical Raman transition. The Raman technique uses a deeply bound electronic excited intermediate state to achieve a large transition dipole moment while reducing photon scattering. Starting from two atoms in their relative motional ground state, we achieve an optical transfer efficiency of 69%. The molecules have a binding energy of 770.2MHz at 8.83(2)G. This technique does not rely on Feshbach resonances or narrow excited-state lines and may allow a wide range of molecular species to be assembled atom-by-atom.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2012.09043,
title = {Coherent optical creation of a single molecule},
author = {Yichao Yu and Kenneth Wang and Jonathan D. Hood and Lewis R. B. Picard and Jessie T. Zhang and William B. Cairncross and Jeremy M. Hutson and Rosario Gonzalez-Ferez and Till Rosenband and Kang-Kuen Ni},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2012.09043},
year = {2021}
}