Freiburg 2024 – scientific programme

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MO: Fachverband Molekülphysik

MO 17: Poster: Cold Molecules

MO 17.9: Poster

Wednesday, March 13, 2024, 17:00–19:00, Tent C

A new apparatus for investigating collisions and chemical processes with ultracold NaK molecules — •Jakob Stalmann¹, Kai Konrad Voges², Sebastian Anskeit¹, Fritz von Gierke¹, and Silke Ospelkaus¹ — ¹Institute of Quantum Optics, Leibniz University Hannover — ²Centre for Cold Matter, Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College London

Ultracold molecular collisions feature many highly complex and still not understood phenomena, such as formation and loss of long-lived collisional complexes, molecular Feshbach resonances and chemical reactions.

Here, we present our efforts for the construction of a new experimental setup using ultracold 23Na39K ground-state molecules as a platform to investigate such collisional phenomena.

For ground-state molecule creation, we first produce optically trapped ultracold atomic ensembles from a dual-species Zeeman slower and MOT setup. The atoms are optically transported to a science chamber, where molecule preparation takes place by creating weakly bound Feshbach molecules and subsequently transfering them into their ground state by a coherent Raman process. In the science chamber a time of flight-velocity map imaging mass spectrometer will be implemented for the detection of all educt and product particles of molecular collisions. Combined with state-selective pulsed laser ionization and fragmentation schemes this allows us to resolve chemical reaction pathways, explore ultracold reaction dynamics and develop new quantum control techniques for chemical reaction steering.

Keywords: ultracold molecules; cold collisions; ion imaging; chemical reactions