Long-lived dipolar molecules and Feshbach molecules in a 3D optical lattice

TL;DR

This study demonstrates the creation of long-lived polar and Feshbach molecules in a 3D optical lattice, significantly extending their lifetime by reducing off-resonant scattering, with potential applications in quantum simulation.

Contribution

It reports the first realization of long-lived ground-state polar molecules and Feshbach molecules in a 3D optical lattice, achieving lifetimes up to 25 seconds and over 20 seconds respectively, with high conversion efficiency.

Findings

Long-lived polar molecules with 25 s lifetime in 3D lattice.

Feshbach molecules with >20 s lifetime, 100-fold improvement.

High-efficiency conversion between molecules and atoms.

Abstract

We have realized long-lived ground-state polar molecules in a 3D optical lattice, with a lifetime of up to 25 s, which is limited only by off-resonant scattering of the trapping light. Starting from a 2D optical lattice, we observe that the lifetime increases dramatically as a small lattice potential is added along the tube-shaped lattice traps. The 3D optical lattice also dramatically increases the lifetime for weakly bound Feshbach molecules. For a pure gas of Feshbach molecules, we observe a lifetime of >20 s in a 3D optical lattice; this represents a 100-fold improvement over previous results. This lifetime is also limited by off-resonant scattering, the rate of which is related to the size of the Feshbach molecule. Individually trapped Feshbach molecules in the 3D lattice can be converted to pairs of K and Rb atoms and back with nearly 100% efficiency.