Probing weakly-bound molecules with nonresonant light

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that pulsed nonresonant laser fields can effectively probe weakly-bound molecules by inducing a centrifugal effect that reveals vibrational wavefunctions and the molecular potential.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method using nonresonant laser pulses to extract vibrational wavefunctions and potential information from weakly-bound molecules.

Findings

Laser-induced shaking can recover vibrational wavefunctions.

The method accurately determines the long-range molecular potential.

Simulations on Rb2 and KRb molecules validate the approach.

Abstract

We show that weakly-bound molecules can be probed by "shaking" in a pulsed nonresonant laser field. The field introduces a centrifugal term which expels the highest vibrational level from the potential that binds it. Our numerical simulations applied to the Rb$_2$ and KRb Feshbach molecules indicate that shaking by feasible laser pulses can be used to accurately recover the square of the vibrational wavefunction and, by inversion, also the long-range part of the molecular potential.