Hyperfine van der Waals repulsion between open-shell polar molecules

TL;DR

This paper introduces a hyperfine van der Waals interaction in open-shell polar molecules that can be controlled via nuclear spin flips, potentially suppressing collisional loss at ultracold temperatures.

Contribution

It demonstrates a novel hyperfine van der Waals interaction mechanism that can be tuned to suppress collisional loss in ultracold open-shell molecules.

Findings

Hyperfine van der Waals interaction can be turned on or off by nuclear spin flips.

This interaction can be repulsive, reducing collisional loss.

The effect is universal across various open-shell molecules.

Abstract

We describe a novel type of interaction between open-shell polar molecules at sub-millikelvin temperatures. This hyperfine van der Waals interaction occurs between two molecules in two rotational states that differ by one quantum. Normally, this induces resonant dipolar interactions that lead to rapid collisional loss. For specific hyperfine states, however, selection rules prevent this. One can effectively turn off the dipolar interaction by merely flipping a nuclear spin. The resulting van der Waals interaction can be repulsive and can suppress collisional loss. We focus on laser-coolable CaF, but show this effect occurs universally for open-shell molecules, including MgF, SrF, BaF and YO. We propose that this effect could be measured by merging molecules in optical tweezers, where flipping a spin in one of the tweezers enables tuning of collision rates by five orders of magnitude.