Hannover 2020 – scientific programme

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A: Fachverband Atomphysik

A 28: Poster Session - Atomic Physics IV

A 28.26: Poster

Thursday, March 12, 2020, 16:00–18:00, Empore Lichthof

Towards trapping ultracold polar molecules in a dark repulsive dipole trap — •Ren-Hao Tao¹, Roman Bause¹, Marcel Duda¹, Xing-Yan Chen¹, Andreas Schindewolf¹, Immanuel Bloch^{1, 2}, and Xin-Yu Luo¹ — ¹Max-Planck Institut für Quantenoptik, Hans-Kopfermann-Str. 1, 85748 Garching, Germany — ²Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Faculty of Physics, Schellingstrasse 4, 80799 Munich, Germany

Ultra-cold molecules, by virtue of their rich ro-vibrational states and significant dipole moments, offer us an exciting platform to study new quantum many-body physics. However, many experiments have shown loss behaviours of molecules consistent with two-body losses. For non-reactive species, this is not expected. A recent proposal suggests that the trapping light in these experiments, despite being far-detuned from molecule transitions, can still electronically excite two-molecule complexes. To test this theory, we plan to trap ²³Na⁴⁰K molecules using a blue-detuned light away from the transition |X¹ Σ⁺,v=0,J=0⟩ → | b³Π, v=0, J=1, Ω=0 ⟩. Such a transition, owing to its small linewidth (2π× 297 Hz), has a low photon scattering rate even if we go near-resonant. As a result, we can trap molecules with less trapping intensity due to their large polarizability at near-detuning. We achieve a trap depth of 4 k_B ·µK with an intensity in the dark region as low as 4W/cm², which is much lower than the predicted threshold intensity for destroying the scattering complex of ²³Na⁴⁰K molecules.