Stabilization of ultracold molecules using optimal control theory

Journal Article · Thu Jul 01 00:00:00 EDT 2004 · Physical Review. A

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.70.013402· OSTI ID:20645767

Koch, Christiane P ^[1]; Palao, Jose P ^[2]; Kosloff, Ronnie ^[2]; Masnou-Seeuws, Francoise ^[3]

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1. Laboratoire Aime Cotton, CNRS, Batiment 505, Campus d'Orsay, 91405 Orsay Cedex (France)
2. Department of Physical Chemistry and Fritz Haber Research Center, Hebrew University, Jerusalem 91904 (Israel)
3. Laboratoire Aime Cotton, CNRS, Batiment 505, Campus d' Orsay, 91405 Orsay Cedex (France)

In recent experiments on ultracold matter, molecules have been produced from ultracold atoms by photoassociation, Feshbach resonances, and three-body recombination. The created molecules are translationally cold, but vibrationally highly excited. This will eventually lead them to be lost from the trap due to collisions. We propose shaped laser pulses to transfer these highly excited molecules to their ground vibrational level. Optimal control theory is employed to find the light field that will carry out this task with minimum intensity. We present results for the sodium dimer. The final target can be reached to within 99% provided the initial guess field is physically motivated. We find that the optimal fields contain the transition frequencies required by a good Franck-Condon pumping scheme. The analysis identifies the ranges of intensity and pulse duration which are able to achieve this task before any other competing processes take place. Such a scheme could produce stable ultracold molecular samples or even stable molecular Bose-Einstein condensates.

• OSTI ID: 20645767
• Journal Information: Physical Review. A, Vol. 70, Issue 1; Other Information: DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.70.013402; (c) 2004 The American Physical Society; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1050-2947
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS
ATOMS
BOSE-EINSTEIN CONDENSATION
DIMERS
FRANCK-CONDON PRINCIPLE
GROUND STATES
LASER RADIATION
MOLECULES
OPTIMAL CONTROL
PHOTON-ATOM COLLISIONS
PHOTON-MOLECULE COLLISIONS
PULSES
RECOMBINATION
RESONANCE
SODIUM
STABILIZATION
THREE-BODY PROBLEM
TRAPS
VIBRATIONAL STATES
VISIBLE RADIATION