Long-lived Feshbach molecules in a 3D optical lattice

We have realized long-lived ground-state polar molecules in a 3D optical lattice, with a lifetime of up to 25 s, which is limited only by off-resonant scattering of the trapping light. Starting from a 2D optical lattice, we observe that the lifetime increases dramatically as a small lattice potential is added along the tube-shaped lattice traps. The 3D optical lattice also dramatically increases the lifetime for weakly bound Feshbach molecules. For a pure gas of Feshbach mole...

We report on the creation of ultracold heteronuclear molecules assembled from fermionic 40K and bosonic 87Rb atoms in a 3D optical lattice. Molecules are produced at a heteronuclear Feshbach resonance both on the attractive and the repulsive side of the resonance. We precisely determine the binding energy of the heteronuclear molecules from rf spectroscopy across the Feshbach resonance. We characterize the lifetime of the molecular sample as a function of magnetic field and m...

Using the technique of stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) we have coherently transferred ultracold 87Rb2 Feshbach molecules into a more deeply bound vibrational quantum level. Our measurements indicate a high transfer efficiency of up to 87%. As the molecules are held in an optical lattice with not more than a single molecule per lattice site, inelastic collisions between the molecules are suppressed and we observe long molecular lifetimes of about 1 s. Using STIRAP ...

We prepare a quantum state where each site of an optical lattice is occupied by exactly one molecule. This is the same quantum state as in a Mott insulator of molecules in the limit of negligible tunneling. Unlike previous Mott insulators, our system consists of molecules which can collide inelastically. In the absence of the optical lattice these collisions would lead to fast loss of the molecules from the sample. To prepare the state, we start from a Mott insulator of atomi...

We report the production of $^{87}$RbCs Feshbach molecules in a crossed-beam dipole trap. A mixture of $^{87}$Rb and $^{133}$Cs is cooled close to quantum degeneracy before an interspecies Feshbach resonance at 197\,G is used to associate up to $\sim5000$ molecules with a temperature of $\sim300$\,nK. The molecules are confined in the dipole trap with a lifetime of 0.21(1)\,s, long enough for future experiments exploring optical transfer to the absolute ground state. We have ...

We report the creation of ultracold bosonic $^{23}$Na$^{87}$Rb Feshbach molecules via magneto-association. By ramping the magnetic field across an interspecies Feshbach resonance, at least 4000 molecules can be produced out of the near degenerate ultracold mixture. Fast loss due to inelastic atom-molecule collisions is observed, which limits the pure molecule number, after residual atoms removal, to 1700. The pure molecule sample can live for 21.8(8) ms in the optical trap, l...

We report here on the production of an ultracold gas of tightly bound Rb2 molecules in the ro-vibrational triplet ground state, close to quantum degeneracy. This is achieved by optically transferring weakly bound Rb2 molecules to the absolute lowest level of the ground triplet potential with a transfer efficiency of about 90%. The transfer takes place in a 3D optical lattice which traps a sizeable fraction of the tightly bound molecules with a lifetime exceeding 200 ms.

We propose to create ultracold ground state molecules in an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate by adiabatic crossing of an optical Feshbach resonance. We envision a scheme where the laser intensity and possibly also frequency are linearly ramped over the resonance. Our calculations for $^{87}$Rb show that for sufficiently tight traps it is possible to avoid spontaneous emission while retaining adiabaticity, and conversion efficiencies of up to 50% can be expected.

The spontaneous dissociation of 85Rb dimers in the highest lying vibrational level has been observed in the vicinity of the Feshbach resonance which was used to produce them. The molecular lifetime shows a strong dependence on magnetic field, varying by three orders of magnitude between 155.5 G and 162.2 G. Our measurements are in good agreement with theoretical predictions in which molecular dissociation is driven by inelastic spin relaxation. Molecule lifetimes of tens of m...

Feshbach resonances in ultra-cold atomic gases have led to some of the most important advances in atomic physics. They did not only enable ground breaking work in the BEC-BCS crossover regime [1], but are also widely used for the association of ultra-cold molecules [2], leading to the formation of molecular Bose-Einstein condensates [3,4] and ultra-cold dipolar molecular systems [5]. Here, we demonstrate the experimental realization of an optical Feshbach resonance using ultr...