Inducing an optical Feshbach resonance via stimulated Raman coupling

Abstract

We demonstrate a novel method of inducing an optical Feshbach resonance based on a coherent free-bound stimulated Raman transition. In our experiment atoms in a 87 Rb Bose-Einstein condensate are exposed to two phase-locked Raman laser beams which couple pairs of colliding atoms to a molecular ground state. By controlling the power and relative detuning of the two laser beams, we can change the atomic scattering length considerably. The dependence of scattering length on these parameters is studied experimentally and modelled theoretically.

Ab initio properties of Li-group-II molecules for ultracold matter studies

“…This photoassociative tuning, pioneered for homonuclear molecules [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21], becomes possible due to the existence of long-lived excited molecular states near narrow intercombination lines of the alkaline-earth or rare-earth atoms. In turn, this might enable efficient ways to form gases of polar molecules without substantial loss by photoassociation.…”

Optical Control of Feshbach Resonances in Fermi Gases Using Molecular Dark States

“…Optical control of Feshbach resonances has been explored previously in Bose gases [7,8] and currently is receiving substantial attention [9]. Optical Feshbach resonances (OFR), which employ photoassociation light to drive a transition from the continuum of the incoming atom pair state to an excited molecular bound state, has been proposed and experimentally observed [8,[10][11][12][13][14]. However, light-induced inelastic collisions and the accompanying loss limit its practical applicability.…”

Optical Control of Magnetic Feshbach Resonances by Closed-Channel Electromagnetically Induced Transparency

“…1 In order to increase the lifetime of the atoms by suppressing spontaneous scattering, M.Theis and coworkers adopted a two-field technique that used two-photon Raman coupling [7] as illustrated in Fig. 1 from the excited state.…”

“…Optical control of interactions in an ultracold gas offers tantalizing possibilities for creating "designer" two-body interactions. Unfortunately, previously reported optical methods [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12] suffer from spontaneous scattering which limits the tunability of interactions. This dissertation reports on the demonstration of new optical methods that uses two optical fields to control interactions near collisional (Feshbach) resonances while suppressing spontaneous scattering by destructive quantum interference.…”

“…[6,7]. More recently, Clark and coworkers used ultracold cesium atoms to demonstrate that by tuning the wavelength of the ω 1 laser ( Fig.…”