Creation of an ultracold gas of ground-state $^{23}\rm{Na}^{87}\rm{Rb}$ molecules

TL;DR

This paper reports the creation of a high-purity ultracold gas of ground-state $^{23}$Na$^{87}$Rb molecules, measuring their electric dipole moments and observing decay dynamics, advancing the study of ultracold molecular interactions.

Contribution

It demonstrates an efficient method to produce and characterize ultracold ground-state $^{23}$Na$^{87}$Rb molecules with high density and controllable dipole moments.

Findings

Up to 8000 molecules in the ground state.

Densities exceeding $10^{11}$ cm$^{-3}$.

Permanent electric dipole moment over one Debye.

Abstract

We report the successful production of an ultracold sample of absolute ground-state $^{23}$Na$^{87}$Rb molecules. Starting from weakly-bound Feshbach molecules formed via magneto-association, the lowest rovibrational and hyperfine level of the electronic ground state is populated following a high efficiency and high resolution two-photon Raman process. The high purity absolute ground-state samples have up to 8000 molecules and densities of over $10^{11}$ cm$^{-3}$. By measuring the Stark shifts induced by external electric fields, we determined the permanent electric dipole moment of the absolute ground-state $^{23}$Na$^{87}$Rb and demonstrated the capability of inducing an effective dipole moment over one Debye. Bimolecular reaction between ground-state $^{23}$Na$^{87}$Rb molecules is endothermic, but we still observed a rather fast decay of the molecular sample. Our results pave the way toward investigation of ultracold molecular collisions in a fully controlled manner, and possibly to quantum gases of ultracold bosonic molecules with strong dipolar interactions.