Formation of ultracold 7Li85Rb molecules in the lowest triplet electronic state by photoassociation and their detection by ionization spectroscopy
Abstract
We report the formation of ultracold 7Li85Rb molecules in the a3Σ+ electronic state by photoassociation (PA) and their detection via resonantly enhanced multiphoton ionization (REMPI). With our dual-species Li and Rb magneto-optical trap apparatus, we detect PA resonances with binding energies up to ∼62 cm−1 below the 7Li 2s 2S1/2 + 85Rb 5p 2P1/2 asymptote. In addition, we use REMPI spectroscopy to probe the a3Σ+ state and excited electronic 33Π and 43Σ+ states and identify a3Σ+ (v″ = 7–13), 33Π (vΠ′ = 0–10), and 43Σ+ (vΣ′ = 0–5) vibrational levels. Our line assignments agree well with ab initio calculations. These preliminary spectroscopic studies on previously unobserved electronic states are crucial to discovering transition pathways for transferring ultracold LiRb molecules created via PA to deeply bound rovibrational levels of the electronic ground state.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Mar 19, 2015
- Source ID
- 10.1063/1.4914917
Entities
People
- Adeel Altaf
- D. S. Elliott
- Jesús Pérez-Ríos
- John Lorenz
- Sourav Dutta
- Yong P. Chen
Organizations
- Army Research Office
- National Science Foundation
- Purdue University
- United States Department of Energy