Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Rotational magic conditions for ultracold molecules in the presence of Raman and Rayleigh scattering

Published

Author(s)

Svetlana Kotochigova, Qingze Guan, Eite Tiesinga, Vito Scarola, Brian DeMarco, Bryce Gadway

Abstract

Molecules have vibrational, rotational, spin-orbit and hyperfine degrees of freedom or quantum states, each of which responds in a unique fashion to external electromagnetic radiation. The control over superpositions of these quantum states is key to coherent manipulation of molecules. For example, the better the coherence time the longer quantum simulations can last. The important quantity for controlling an ultracold molecule with laser light is its complex-valued molecular dynamic polarizability. Its real part determines the tweezer or trapping potential as felt by the molecule, while its imaginary part limits the coherence time. Here, our study shows that efficient trapping of a molecule in its vibrational ground state can be achieved by selecting a laser frequency with a detuning on the order of tens of GHz relative to an electric-dipole-forbidden molecular transition. Close proximity to this nearly forbidden transition allows to create a sufficiently deep trapping potential for multiple rotational states without sacrificing coherence times among these states from Raman and Rayleigh scattering. In fact, we demonstrate that magic trapping conditions for multiple rotational states of the ultracold 23Na87Rb polar molecule can be created.
Citation
New Journal of Physics

Citation

Kotochigova, S. , Guan, Q. , Tiesinga, E. , Scarola, V. , DeMarco, B. and Gadway, B. (2023), Rotational magic conditions for ultracold molecules in the presence of Raman and Rayleigh scattering, New Journal of Physics, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=957900 (Accessed October 6, 2024)

Issues

If you have any questions about this publication or are having problems accessing it, please contact reflib@nist.gov.

Created October 24, 2023, Updated June 20, 2024