Two interacting ultracold molecules in a one-dimensional harmonic trap

Abstract

We investigate the properties of two interacting ultracold polar molecules described as distinguishable quantum rigid rotors, trapped in a one-dimensional harmonic potential. The molecules interact via a multichannel two-body contact potential, incorporating the short-range anisotropy of intermolecular interactions including dipole-dipole interaction. The impact of external electric and magnetic fields resulting in Stark and Zeeman shifts of molecular rovibrational states is also investigated. Energy spectra and eigenstates are calculated by means of the exact diagonalization. The importance and interplay of the molecular rotational structure, anisotropic interactions, spin-rotation coupling, electric and magnetic fields, and harmonic trapping potential are examined in detail, and compared to the system of two harmonically trapped distinguishable atoms. The presented model and results may provide microscopic parameters for molecular many-body Hamiltonians, and may be useful for the development of bottom-up molecule-by-molecule assembled molecular quantum simulators.

Observation of Collisions between Two Ultracold Ground-State CaF Molecules

“…Favorable collisional properties, i.e., high elastic scattering rate compared to inelastic loss rate [21,22], could lead to direct evaporative cooling of molecular gases to quantum degeneracy. Full understanding of molecular collisions could also allow one to tune the elastic [23][24][25] and inelastic scattering rates [26][27][28][29] by applying external fields. Furthermore, by elucidating the role of specific quantum states and quantum statistics of the reactants [1,30,31], collisions in the ultracold regime provide important insights into chemical and inelastic processes.…”

Low temperature scattering with the R-matrix method: argon-argon scattering

“…Laser cooling, Stark deceleration, buffer-gas cooling, and evaporative cooling are among a wide variety of cooling techniques developed in recent decades, which have allowed for precise control over individual molecules, especially diatomic molecules [1][2][3][4]. As such, a variety of experiments at millikelvin and microkelvin temperatures (so-called 'ultracold' temperatures) have now become routine, including experiments that probe collisions between small species in unprecedented levels of detail [5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. This has led to the possibility of the fine-tuning of state-to-state reaction dynamics for reactions involving only a small number of partial waves [12,13].…”

Exactly solvable model of two interacting Rydberg-dressed atoms confined in a two-dimensional harmonic trap

“…In this way, we generalize recent results obtained for infinite interaction strength (V → ∞), 17 as well as for the corresponding one-dimensional problem, 18,19 and we extend the list of exactly (or almost exactly) solvable models of two interacting particles. [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30] We also perform a comprehensive comparison of the results obtained with the two potential shapes ( 2) and ( 3).…”