Controlling magnetic Feshbach resonances in polar open-shell molecules with non-resonant light

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that non-resonant light can significantly enhance and control magnetically tunable Feshbach resonances in polar open-shell molecules, enabling the creation of ultracold molecules suitable for quantum simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a method to engineer Feshbach resonances using non-resonant light, increasing their width by three orders of magnitude for better molecule formation.

Findings

Resonance width increased by three orders of magnitude with non-resonant light.

Non-resonant light allows control over resonance position and width.

Potential to produce ultracold molecules with large electric and magnetic dipole moments.

Abstract

Magnetically tunable Feshbach resonances for polar paramagnetic ground-state diatomics are too narrow to allow for magnetoassociation starting from trapped, ultracold atoms. We show that non-resonant light can be used to engineer the Feshbach resonances in their position and width. For non-resonant field strengths of the order of $10^9\,$W/cm$^2$, we find the width to be increased by three orders of magnitude, reaching a few Gauss. This opens the way for producing ultracold molecules with sizeable electric and magnetic dipole moments and thus for many-body quantum simulations with such particles.