Conical intersections in laboratory coordinates with ultracold molecules

TL;DR

This paper explores how external electric and magnetic fields can create conical intersections in ultracold polar molecules, leading to geometric phase effects that induce stable superfluid states with half-integer quantized angular momentum.

Contribution

It introduces a method to generate conical intersections in laboratory coordinates using external fields and analyzes their impact on superfluid stability in ultracold molecules.

Findings

Creation of conical intersections via external fields.

Induction of geometric phase effects in ultracold molecules.

Stable superfluid states with half-integer quantized angular momentum.

Abstract

For two states of opposite parity that cross as a function of an external magnetic field, the addition of an electric field will break the symmetry and induce an avoided crossing. A suitable arrangement of fields may be used to create a conical intersection as a function of external spatial coordinates. We consider the effect of the resulting geometric phase for ultracold polar molecules. For a Bose-Einstein condensate in the mean-field approximation, the geometric phase effect induces stable states of persistent superfluid flow that are characterized by half-integer quantized angular momentum.