English

Creation of ultracold $^{87}$RbCs molecules in the rovibrational ground state

Atomic Physics 2015-06-22 v3

Abstract

We report the creation of a sample of over 1000 ultracold 87^{87}RbCs molecules in the lowest rovibrational ground state, from an atomic mixture of 87^{87}Rb and Cs, by magnetoassociation on an interspecies Feshbach resonance followed by stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP). We measure the binding energy of the RbCs molecule to be hc×3811.576(1)h c \times 3811.576(1) cm1^{-1} and the v=0,J=0>|v''=0, J''=0> to v=0,J=2>|v''=0, J''=2> splitting to be h×2940.09(6)h \times 2940.09(6) MHz. Stark spectroscopy of the rovibrational ground state yields an electric dipole moment of 1.225(3)(8) D, where the values in parentheses are the statistical and systematic uncertainties, respectively. We demonstrate that a space-fixed dipole moment of 0.355(2)(4) D is accessible in RbCs, which is substantially higher than in previous work.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1409.1485,
  title  = {Creation of ultracold $^{87}$RbCs molecules in the rovibrational ground state},
  author = {Peter K. Molony and Philip D. Gregory and Zhonghua Ji and Bo Lu and Michael P. Köppinger and C. Ruth Le Sueur and Caroline L. Blackley and Jeremy M. Hutson and Simon L. Cornish},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1409.1485},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

5 pages, 4 figures + supplementary material