We explore the quantum dynamics of heteronuclear atomic collisions in waveguides and demonstrate the existence of a novel mechanism for the resonant formation of polar molecules. The molecular formation probabilities can be tuned by changing the trap frequencies characterizing the transverse modes of the atomic species. The origin of this effect is the confinement-induced mixing of the relative and center of mass motions in the atomic collision process leading to a coupling of the diatomic continuum to center of mass excited molecular states in closed transverse channels.
Deactivation of broad quasi-one-dimensional dibosonic molecules is analyzed. Within integrable Lieb-Liniger-McGuire (LLMG) model an exact expression does not demonstrate suppression of the deactivation at low collision energies. Solution of Faddeev equations demonstrates that when a Feshbach resonance lifts the symmetry of the LLMG model the deactivation becomes suppressed. This effect shows a way for formation of a stable gas of dibosonic Feshbach molecules.
We observe and analyze d-wave resonant scattering of bosons in tightly confining harmonic waveguides. It is shown that the d-wave resonance emerges in the quasi-1D regime as an imprint of a 3D d-wave shape resonance. A scaling relation for the position of the d-wave resonance is provided. By changing the trap frequency, ultracold scattering can be continuously tuned from s-wave to d-wave resonant behavior. The effect can be utilized for the realization of ultracold atomic gases interacting via higher partial waves and opens a novel possibility for studying strongly correlated atomic systems be…
We demonstrate a compact and robust method for generating a 399-nm light resonant on the $^{1}S_{0}-^{1}P_{1}$ transition in ytterbium using a single-pass periodically poled LiNbO$_{3}$ waveguide for second harmonic generation (SHG). The obtained output power at 399 nm was 25 mW when a 798-nm fundamental power of 380 mW was coupled to the waveguide. We observed no degradation of the SHG power for 13 hours with a low power of 6 mW. The obtained SHG light has been used as a seed light for injection locking, which provides sufficient power for laser cooling ytterbium.
The decay rate $\gam$ of an excited dipole molecule inside a waveguide is evaluated for the strongly coupled matter-field case near a cutoff frequency $\ome_c$ without using perturbation analysis. Due to the singularity in the density of photon states at the cutoff frequency, we find that $\gam$ depends non-analytically on the coupling constant $\ggg$ as $\ggg^{4/3}$. In contrast to the ordinary evaluation of $\gam$ which relies on the Fermi golden rule (itself based on perturbation analysis), $\gam$ has an upper bound and does not diverge at $\ome_c$ even if we assume perfect conductance in t…
The atoms moving within the waveguide with a critical frequency higher than the resonant frequency of atoms are suggested for obtaining the "slow light". Due to the absence of the resonant mode in the guide the atoms conserves excitation and coherence. The speed of this mixed excitation (electromagnetic field + moving atom) can be very low or even zero. The atoms moving within the waveguide with a critical frequency higher than the resonant frequency of atoms are suggested for obtaining the "slow light". Due to the absence of the resonant mode in the guide the atoms conserves excitation and co…
We experimentally show that the N-H bond cleavage in pyrrole molecule following resonant electron attachment is allowed and controlled by the motion of the atoms which are not dissociating, namely of the carbon-attached hydrogen atoms. In order to interpret these findings, we have developed a method for locating all resonant and virtual states of an electron-molecule system in the complex plane, based on all-electron R-matrix scattering calculations. Mapping these as a function of molecular geometry allows us to separate two contributing dissociation mechanisms: a $π^*$ resonance formation ind…
We show that the probability of the collision-induced absorption of non-resonant microwave photons by a gas of ultracold molecules is dramatically enhanced near a Feshbach scattering resonance. This can be used for detecting Feshbach resonances of ultracold molecules by measuring the microwave field absorption and for tuning the elastic scattering cross sections of ultracold molecules by varying the frequency and intensity of the microwave field in a wide range of the field parameters.
We perform a comprehensive investigation of Förster resonant energy transfer in a room-temperature thermal mixture of ammonia molecules and rubidium Rydberg atoms. Fully state-resolved measurement of the Rydberg-atom populations is achieved by combining millimeter-wave state transfer with state-selective field ionization. This allows aspects of the energy transfer process such as state dependence, ammonia pressure dependence, and dependence on the energy resonance condition to be investigated in detail. Our results pave the way for future quantum experiments combining polar molecules and Rydbe…
We present a theoretical study of the rotational dynamics of asymmetry top molecules in an electric field and a parallel non-resonant linearly polarized laser pulse. The time-dependent Schrödinger equation is solved within the rigid rotor approximation. Using the benzonitrile molecule as prototype, we investigate the field-dressed dynamics for experimentally accessible field configurations and compare these results to the adiabatic predictions. We show that for an asymmetric top molecule in parallel fields, the formation of the pendular doublets and the avoided crossings between neighboring le…
We demonstrate microwave dressing on ultracold, fermionic ${}^{23}$Na${}^{40}$K ground-state molecules and observe resonant dipolar collisions with cross sections exceeding three times the $s$-wave unitarity limit. The origin of these collisions is the resonant alignment of the approaching molecules' dipoles along the intermolecular axis, which leads to strong attraction. We explain our observations with a conceptually simple two-state picture based on the Condon approximation. Furthermore, we perform coupled-channels calculations that agree well with the experimentally observed collision rate…
We study the resonant control of two nonreactive polar molecules in an optical lattice site, focussing on the example of RbCs. Collisional control can be achieved by tuning bound states of the intermolecular dipolar potential, by varying the applied electric field or trap frequency. We consider a wide range of electric fields and trapping geometries, showing that a three-dimensional optical lattice allows for significantly wider avoided crossings than free space or quasi-two dimensional geometries. Furthermore, we find that dipolar confinement induced resonances can be created with reasonable …
We show that dressing polar molecules with a far-off-resonant optical field leads to new types of intermolecular potentials, which undergo a crossover from the inverse-power to oscillating behavior depending on the intermolecular distance, and whose parameters can be tuned by varying the laser intensity and wavelength. We present analytic expressions for the potential energy surfaces, thereby providing direct access to the parameters of an optical field required to design intermolecular interactions experimentally.
Magnetically tunable Feshbach resonances for polar paramagnetic ground-state diatomics are too narrow to allow for magnetoassociation starting from trapped, ultracold atoms. We show that non-resonant light can be used to engineer the Feshbach resonances in their position and width. For non-resonant field strengths of the order of $10^9\,$W/cm$^2$, we find the width to be increased by three orders of magnitude, reaching a few Gauss. This opens the way for producing ultracold molecules with sizeable electric and magnetic dipole moments and thus for many-body quantum simulations with such particl…
The coherent flow of a Bose-Einstein condensate through a quantum dot in a magnetic waveguide is studied. By the numerical integration of the time-dependent Gross-Pitaevskii equation in presence of a source term, we simulate the propagation process of the condensate through a double barrier potential in the waveguide. We find that resonant transport is suppressed in interaction-induced regimes of bistability, where multiple scattering states exist at the same chemical potential and the same incident current. We demonstrate, however, that a temporal control of the external potential can be used…
Full control of molecular interactions, including reactive losses, would open new frontiers in quantum science. Here, we demonstrate extreme tunability of chemical reaction rates by using an external electric field to shift excited collision channels of ultracold molecules into degeneracy with the initial collision channel. In this situation, resonant dipolar interactions mix the channels at long range, dramatically altering the intermolecular potential. We prepare fermionic potassium-rubidium (KRb) molecules in their first excited rotational state and observe a three orders-of-magnitude modul…
This paper theoretically treats the spontaneous resonant inelastic scattering of Laguerre-Gauss (LG) beams from the totally symmetric vibrations of complex polyatomic molecules within the semi-classical framework. We develop an interaction Hamiltonian that accounts for the position of the molecule within the excitation beam to derive the effective differential scattering cross-section of a classical LG beam from a molecule using the frequency domain third order nonlinear optical response function. To gain physical insight into this scattering process, we utilize a model vibronic molecule to st…
We have demonstrated the resonant control of the elastic scattering cross sections in the vicinity of Feshbach resonances between $^{23}$Na$^{40}$K molecules and $^{40}$K atoms by studying the thermalization between them. The elastic scattering cross sections vary by more than two orders of magnitude close to the resonance, and can be well described by an asymmetric Fano profile. The parameters that characterize the magnetically tunable s-wave scattering length are determined from the elastic scattering cross sections. The observation of resonantly controlled elastic scattering cross sections …
The coherent radiation spectrum of two-level polar molecules with UV transition is studied at the multiphoton resonant excitation by a moderately strong laser field. The spectrum corresponding to harmonic generation and low-frequency radiation is investigated both analytically and numerically. Specifically, a mechanism for generation of intense smoothly tunable terahertz radiation by two-level molecular configurations (with dynamic Stark shifts) possessing permanent dipole moments, is considered.
We theoretically study collisions between ultracold polar molecules that are polarized by microwave or static electric fields. We systematically study the dependence on field strength, microwave polarization, and detuning from rotational transitions. We calculate the loss in two-body collisions that is observable experimentally and compare to the results expected for purely first-order dipolar interactions. For ground state molecules polarized by a static electric field, the dynamics are accurately described by first-order dipolar interactions. For microwave dressing, instead, resonant dipolar…
We develop and analyze a theoretical model which yields the shifts and widths of Feshbach resonances in an atomic waveguide. It is based on a multichannel approach for confinement-induced resonances (CIRs) and atomic transitions in the waveguides in the multimode regime. We replace in this scheme the single-channel scalar interatomic interaction by the four-channel tensorial potential modeling resonances of broad, narrow and overlapping character according to the two-channel parametrization of A.D.Lange et al. As an input the experimentally known parameters of Feshbach resonances in the absenc…
We report the observation of a dimer-dimer inelastic collision resonance for ultracold Feshbach molecules made of bosonic sodium and rubidium atoms. This resonance, which we attribute to the crossing of the dimer-dimer threshold with a heteronuclear tetramer state, manifests itself as a pronounced inelastic loss peak of dimers when the interspecies scattering length between the constituent atoms is tuned. Near this resonance, a strong modification of the temperature dependence of the dimer-dimer scattering is observed. Our result provides insight into the heteronuclear four-body system consist…
Using the ground potential energy surface[M. Ayouz \textit{et\, al}. J. Chem Phys \textbf{132} 194309 (2010)] of the H$_3^-$ molecule, we have determined the energies and widths of the complex resonant levels of H$_3^-$ located up to 4000 cm$^{-1}$ above the dissociation limit H$^-$+H$_2(v_d=0,j_d=0)$. Bound and resonant levels of the H$_2$D$^-$ and D$_2$H$^-$ isotopologues have been also characterized within the same energy range. The method combines the hyperspherical adiabatic approach, slow variable discretization method, and complex absorbing potential. These results represent the first s…
