Jee Woo Park

Ultracold Dipolar Gas of Fermionic 23Na40 K Molecules in Their Absolute Ground State.

We report on the creation of an ultracold dipolar gas of fermionic 23Na40 K molecules in their absolute rovibrational and hyperfine ground state. Starting from weakly bound Feshbach molecules, we demonstrate hyperfine resolved two-photon transfer into the singlet X 1Σ+|v=0,J=0⟩ ground state, coherently bridging a binding energy difference of 0.65 eV via stimulated rapid adiabatic passage. The spin-polarized, nearly quantum degenerate molecular gas displays a lifetime longer than 2.5 s, highlighting NaKs stability against two-body chemical reactions. A homogeneous electric field is applied to induce a dipole moment of up to 0.8 D. With these advances, the exploration of many-body physics with strongly dipolar Fermi gases of 23Na40K molecules is within experimental reach.

Ultracold fermionic Feshbach molecules of 23Na40K.

We report on the formation of ultracold weakly bound Feshbach molecules of 23Na40K, the first fermionic molecule that is chemically stable in its absolute ground state. The lifetime of the nearly degenerate molecular gas exceeds 100 ms in the vicinity of the Feshbach resonance. The measured dependence of the molecular binding energy on the magnetic field demonstrates the open-channel character of the molecules over a wide field range and implies significant singlet admixture. This will enable efficient transfer into the singlet vibrational ground state, resulting in a stable molecular Fermi gas with strong dipolar interactions.

Ultracold Fermionic Feshbach Molecules of 23 Na 40 K

We report on the formation of ultracold weakly bound Feshbach molecules of 23Na40K, the first fermionic molecule that is chemically stable in its absolute ground state. The lifetime of the nearly degenerate molecular gas exceeds 100 ms in the vicinity of the Feshbach resonance. The measured dependence of the molecular binding energy on the magnetic field demonstrates the open-channel character of the molecules over a wide field range and implies significant singlet admixture. This will enable efficient transfer into the singlet vibrational ground state, resulting in a stable molecular Fermi gas with strong dipolar interactions.

Strongly interacting isotopic Bose-Fermi mixture immersed in a Fermi sea

We have created a triply quantum-degenerate mixture of bosonic {sup 41}K and two fermionic species {sup 40}K and {sup 6}Li. The boson is shown to be an efficient coolant for the two fermions, spurring hopes for the observation of fermionic superfluids with imbalanced masses. We observe multiple heteronuclear Feshbach resonances, in particular a wide s-wave resonance for the combination {sup 41}K-{sup 40}K, opening up studies of strongly interacting isotopic Bose-Fermi mixtures. For large imbalance in the local densities of different species, we enter the polaronic regime of dressed impurities immersed in a bosonic or fermionic bath.

Quantum degenerate Bose-Fermi mixture of chemically different atomic species with widely tunable interactions

We have created a quantum degenerate Bose-Fermi mixture of 23Na and 40K with widely tunable interactions via broad interspecies Feshbach resonances. Twenty Feshbach resonances between 23Na and 40K were identified. The large and negative triplet background scattering length between 23Na and 40K causes a sharp enhancement of the fermion density in the presence of a Bose condensate. As explained via the asymptotic bound-state model (ABM), this strong background scattering leads to a series of wide Feshbach resonances observed at low magnetic fields. Our work opens up the prospect to create chemically stable, fermionic ground state molecules of 23Na-40K where strong, long-range dipolar interactions will set the dominant energy scale.

Second-scale nuclear spin coherence time of ultracold 23 Na 40 K molecules

Extending the coherence time of molecules Quantum properties of atoms and molecules can be exploited for precision measurements or quantum information processing. The complex state structure of molecules can be exploited, but it is hard to preserve the coherence between pairs of those states in applications. Park et al. created fermionic molecules of NaK in the rovibrational ground state that maintained coherence between their nuclear spin states on a time scale of 1 second. This long coherence time makes dipolar ultracold molecules a valuable quantum resource. Science, this issue p. 372 The use of nuclear spin states extends the coherence time of dipolar ultracold molecules, making them a valuable quantum resource. Coherence, the stability of the relative phase between quantum states, is central to quantum mechanics and its applications. For ultracold dipolar molecules at sub-microkelvin temperatures, internal states with robust coherence are predicted to offer rich prospects for quantum many-body physics and quantum information processing. We report the observation of stable coherence between nuclear spin states of ultracold fermionic sodium-potassium (NaK) molecules in the singlet rovibrational ground state. Ramsey spectroscopy reveals coherence times on the scale of 1 second; this enables high-resolution spectroscopy of the molecular gas. Collisional shifts are shown to be absent down to the 100-millihertz level. This work opens the door to the use of molecules as a versatile quantum memory and for precision measurements on dipolar quantum matter.

Two-photon pathway to ultracold ground state molecules of 23Na40K

We report on high-resolution spectroscopy of ultracold fermionic 23Na40K Feshbach molecules, and identify a two-photon pathway to the rovibrational singlet ground state via a resonantly mixed B1Π ~ c3Σ+intermediate state. Photoassociation in a 23Na–40K atomic mixture and one-photon spectroscopy on 23Na40K Feshbach molecules reveal about 20 vibrational levels of the electronically excited c3Σ+state. Two of these levels are found to be strongly perturbed by nearby B1Π levels via spin–orbit coupling, resulting in additional lines of dominant singlet character in the perturbed complex , or of resonantly mixed character in . The dominantly singlet level is used to locate the absolute rovibrational singlet ground state via Autler–Townes spectroscopy. We demonstrate coherent two-photon coupling via dark state spectroscopy between the predominantly triplet Feshbach molecular state and the singlet ground state. Its binding energy is measured to be 5212.0447(1) cm−1, a thousand-fold improvement in accuracy compared to previous determinations. In their absolute singlet ground state, 23Na40K molecules are chemically stable under binary collisions and possess a large electric dipole moment of 2.72 Debye. Our work thus paves the way towards the creation of strongly dipolar Fermi gases of NaK molecules.