Hannover 2013 – scientific programme

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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik

Q 26: Ultra-cold atoms, ions and BEC III (with A)

Q 26.1: Talk

Tuesday, March 19, 2013, 11:00–11:15, B 302

Shedding light on three-body recombination in ultracold atomic gases — •Artjom Krükow¹, Arne Härter¹, Markus Deiss¹, Björn Drews¹, Eberhard Tiemann², and Johannes Hecker Denschlag¹ — ¹Institut für Quantenmaterie and Center for Integrated Quantum Science and Technology IQST, Universit ät Ulm, 89069 Ulm, Germany — ²Institute of Quantum Optics, Leibniz Universität Hannover, 30167 Hannover, Germany

We investigate three-body recombination in an optically confined ultracold cloud of ⁸⁷Rb atoms, in which Rb₂ molecules are formed. We examine the distribution of the molecular quantum states that are populated in this process. For this we ionize the Rb₂ molecules in a 3-photon REMPI scheme with a narrow-linewidth laser at a wavelength of around 1064nm. Subsequently the ionized molecules are trapped in a linear Paul trap where they are detected with single particle sensitivity and virtually no background. As we scan the frequency of the ionization laser, we observe a dense spectrum of narrow resonance lines which contains the information on the final states populated in the recombination events. We can resolve vibrational, rotational and hyperfine levels of the triplet and singlet ground state molecules. We observe deeply bound states with binding energies up to 750 GHz× h. We expect this method to provide a pathway to understanding three-body recombination in ultracold atomic gases which so far lacks a full theoretical treatment.