Versatile electric fields for the manipulation of ultracold NaK molecules

TL;DR

This paper introduces a versatile electrode design that enables precise, tunable electric fields for manipulating ultracold NaK molecules, facilitating advanced control in quantum experiments.

Contribution

The authors present a novel electrode geometry that induces fully tunable dipole moments in ultracold NaK molecules with high spatial uniformity and optical transparency.

Findings

Achieved up to 68% of the molecules' internal dipole moment.

Generated electric field gradients suitable for addressing molecules in optical lattices.

Maintained electric field variation below 10^{-6} over the trapping volume.

Abstract

In this paper, we present an electrode geometry for the manipulation of ultracold rovibrational ground state NaK molecules. The electrode system allows to induce a dipole moment in trapped diatomic NaK molecules with a magnitude up to $68 \%$ of their internal dipole moment along any direction in a given two-dimensional plane. The strength, the sign and the direction of the induced dipole moment is therefore fully tunable. Furthermore, the possibility to create strong electric field gradients provides the opportunity to address molecules in single layers of an optical lattice. The maximal relative variation of the electric field over the trapping volume is below $10^{-6}$. At the desired electric field value of 10 kV/cm this corresponds to a deviation of 0.01 V/cm. The electrode structure is made of transparent indium tin oxide and combines large optical access for sophisticated optical dipole traps and optical lattice configurations with the possibility to create versatile electric field configurations.