Dynamics of ultracold molecules in confined geometry and electric field

TL;DR

This paper develops a quantum formalism to analyze the behavior of ultracold polar molecules in confined geometries under electric fields, revealing mechanisms to suppress chemical reactions and understanding collision dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces a novel time-independent quantum approach for molecules with electric dipoles in confined geometries considering quantum statistics and selection rules.

Findings

Chemical reactions can be suppressed by statistical or potential energy mechanisms.

Fermionic and bosonic molecules exhibit different reaction suppression behaviors.

Collisions transferring molecules between states do not cause overall molecule loss.

Abstract

We present a time-independent quantum formalism to describe the dynamics of molecules with permanent electric dipole moments in a two-dimensional confined geometry such as a one-dimensional optical lattice, in the presence of an electric field. Bose/Fermi statistics and selection rules play a crucial role in the dynamics. As examples, we compare the dynamics of confined fermionic and bosonic polar KRb molecules under different confinements and electric fields. We show how chemical reactions can be suppressed, either by a "statistical suppression" which applies for fermions at small electric fields and confinements, or by a "potential energy suppression", which applies for both fermions and bosons at high electric fields and confinements. We also explore collisions that transfer molecules from one state of the confining potential to another. Although these collisions can be significant, we show that they do not play a role in the loss of the total number of molecules in the gas.