Towards Ultracold Molecule Formation in RbCs, RbSr and LiYb

Professor Jeremy Hutson

University of Durham, UK

2:30 pm Monday, 13 February 2012, EN101 Lecture Theatre (EN Building), Hawthorn.

It is now possible to form heteronuclear molecules by associating pairs of ultracold atoms and to transfer them to their polar absolute ground state. This talk will review the methods used to do this for Cs_2 [Nat. Phys. 6, 265 (2010)] and KRb (Ni et al., Science 322, 231 (2008)] and describe recent progress towards ground-state molecule production in RbCs [arxiv:physics/1201.1438 (2012)]. It will also explore the possibility of extending molecule formation to molecules made up of an alkali-metal atom and a singlet-S atom, such as RbSr [PRL 105, 153201 (2010)] and LiYb [PRL 108, 043201 (2012)]. Such molecules have doublet-sigma ground states and will have novel properties based on control with both electric and magnetic fields [PRL 103, 083201 (2009)].

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