Related papers: Engineering an all-optical route to ultracold mole…

Photoassociation of two ultracold rubidium atoms and the subsequent formation of stable molecules in the singlet ground and lowest triplet states is investigated theoretically. The method employs laser pulses inducing transitions via…

We demonstrate the direct formation of vibronic ground state RbCs molecules by photoassociation of ultracold atoms followed by radiative stabilization. The photoassociation proceeds through deeply-bound levels of the (2)^{3}\Pi_{0^{+}}…

We demonstrate the production of ultracold polar RbCs molecules in their vibronic ground state, via photoassociation of laser-cooled atoms followed by a laser-stimulated state transfer process. The resulting sample of $X ^1\Sigma^+ (v=0)$…

We consider the formation of cold ground-state polar molecules in a low vibrational level by laser fields. Starting from a pair of cold colliding atoms of dissimilar species, we propose a strategy consisting of three steps. In the first…

Chemical reactions can be surprisingly efficient at ultracold temperatures ( < 1mK) due to the wave nature of atoms and molecules. The study of reactions in the ultracold regime is a new research frontier enabled by cooling and trapping…

The methods producing cold molecules from cold atoms tend to leave molecular ensembles with substantial residual internal energy. For instance, Cs2 molecules initially formed via photoassociation of cold Cs atoms are in several vibrational…

Photoassociation of ultracold atoms is shown to lead to alignment of the product molecules along the excitation laser polarization axis. We theoretically investigate pulsed photoassociation of $^{87}Rb$ atoms into a specific weakly-bound…

We discuss the production of ultracold molecules in their electronic ground state by photoassociation employing electronically excited states with ion-pair character and strong spin-orbit interaction. A short photoassociation laser pulse…

An experimental pump-probe study of the photoassociative creation of translationally ultracold rubidium molecules is presented together with numerical simulations of the process. The formation of loosely bound excited-state dimers is…

This theoretical paper investigates the formation of ground state molecules from ultracold cesium atoms in a two-color scheme. Following previous work on photoassociation with chirped picosecond pulses [Luc-Koenig et al., Phys. Rev. A {\bf…

We have produced ultracold, polar RbCs* molecules via photoassociation in a laser-cooled mixture of Rb and Cs atoms. Using a model of the RbCs* molecular interaction which reproduces the observed rovibrational structure, we infer decay…

We have recently demonstrated that optical pumping methods combined with photoassociation of ultra-cold atoms can produce ultra-cold and dense samples of molecules in their absolute rovibronic ground state. More generally, both the external…

Some of us have recently reported in Science 321 232 (2008) vibrational cooling of translationally cold Cs_2 molecules into the lowest vibrational level v=0 of the singlet X 1Sigma_g ground electronic state. Starting from a sample of cold…

Ultracold LiCs molecules in the absolute ground state X$^1\Sigma^+$, v"=0, J"=0 are formed via a single photo-association step starting from laser-cooled atoms. The selective production of v"=0, J"=2 molecules with a 50-fold higher rate is…

We investigate pump-dump photoassociation of ultracold molecules with amplitude- and phase-modulated femtosecond laser pulses. For this purpose a perturbative model for the light-matter interaction is developed and combined with a genetic…

The formation of ultracold molecules via stimulated emission followed by a radiative deexcitation cascade in the presence of a static electric field is investigated. By analyzing the corresponding cross sections, we demonstrate the…

Optical Feshbach resonances [Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 193001 (2005)] and pump-dump photoassociation with short laser pulses [Phys. Rev. A 73, 033408 (2006)] have been proposed as means to coherently form stable ultracold alkali dimer molecules.…

We recently reported the formation of ultracold LiCs molecules in the rovibrational ground state X1Sigma+,v''=0,J''=0 [J. Deiglmayr et al., PRL 101, 133004 (2008)]. Here we discuss details of the experimental setup and present a thorough…

We propose a mechanism to produce a superposition of atomic and molecular states by a train of ultrashort laser pulses combined with weak control fields. By adjusting the repetition rate of the pump pulses and the intensity of the coupling…

We report on the direct conversion of laser-cooled 41K and 87Rb atoms into ultracold 41K87Rb molecules in the rovibrational ground state via photoassociation followed by stimulated Raman adiabatic passage. High-resolution spectroscopy based…