Abstract
We show that the lifetime of ultracold ground-state molecules in an optical trap is limited by fast optical excitation of long-lived two-body collision complexes. We partially suppress this loss mechanism by applying square-wave modulation to the trap intensity, such that the molecules spend 75% of each modulation cycle in the dark. By varying the modulation frequency, we show that the lifetime of the collision complex is in the dark. We find that the rate of optical excitation of the collision complex is for , leading to a lifetime of for typical trap intensities. These results explain the two-body loss observed in experiments on nonreactive bialkali molecules.
- Received 7 February 2020
- Accepted 27 March 2020
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.124.163402
Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.
Published by the American Physical Society
Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)
synopsis
Excited Molecules Escape Their Trap
Published 23 April 2020
The loss of ultracold molecules from an optical trap comes from optical excitation of the complexes that form when two of the molecules collide.
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