Production of ultracold Cs*Yb molecules by photoassociation

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the production and detection of ultracold Cs*Yb molecules via photoassociation, revealing detailed rovibrational spectra and hyperfine structure, and extends to multiple isotopic combinations.

Contribution

It reports the first observation of ultracold Cs*Yb molecules, characterizes their rovibrational states, hyperfine interactions, and supports the existence of over 150 bound states in the excited-state potential.

Findings

13 rovibrational states observed for Cs174Yb

Hyperfine splitting decreases with binding energy

Ultracold molecules produced for multiple isotopes

Abstract

We report the production of ultracold heteronuclear Cs$^*$Yb molecules through one-photon photoassociation applied to an ultracold atomic mixture of Cs and Yb confined in an optical dipole trap. We use trap-loss spectroscopy to detect molecular states below the Cs($^{2}P_{1/2}$) + Yb($^{1}S_{0}$) asymptote. For $^{133}$Cs$^{174}$Yb, we observe 13 rovibrational states with binding energies up to $\sim$500 GHz. For each rovibrational state we observe two resonances associated with the Cs hyperfine structure and show that the hyperfine splitting in the diatomic molecule decreases for more deeply bound states. In addition, we produce ultracold fermionic $^{133}$Cs$^{173}$Yb and bosonic $^{133}$Cs$^{172}$Yb and $^{133}$Cs$^{170}$Yb molecules. From mass scaling, we determine the number of bound states supported by the 2(1/2) excited-state potential to be 154 or 155.