Photoassociative creation of ultracold heteronuclear ⁶Li⁴⁰K^* molecules

Author： Ridinger A. Chaudhuri S. Salez T. Fernandes D. R. Bouloufa N. Dulieu O. Salomon C. Chevy F.

E-ISSN： 1286-4854|96|3|33001-33001

ISSN： 0295-5075

Source： EPL (EUROPHYSICS LETTERS), Vol.96, Iss.3, 2011-10, pp. : 33001-33001

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Abstract

We investigate the formation of weakly bound, electronically excited, heteronuclear ⁶Li⁴⁰K^* molecules by single-photon photoassociation in a magneto-optical trap. We performed trap loss spectroscopy within a range of 325 GHz below the Li(2S_1/2)+K(4P_3/2) and Li(2S_1/2)+K(4P_1/2) asymptotic states and observed more than 60 resonances, which we identify as rovibrational levels of 7 of 8 attractive long-range molecular potentials. The long-range dispersion coefficients and rotational constants are derived. We find large molecule formation rates of up to ∼3.5×10⁷s^{− 1}, which are shown to be comparable to those for homonuclear ⁴⁰K₂^*. Using a theoretical model we infer decay rates to the deeply bound electronic ground-state vibrational level X¹Σ⁺(v′ =3) of ∼5×10⁴ s⁻¹. Our results pave the way for the production of ultracold bosonic ground-state ⁶Li⁴⁰K molecules which exhibit a large intrinsic permanent electric dipole moment.