Darmstadt 2008 – scientific programme

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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik

Q 51: Poster Ultrakalte Moleküle

Q 51.2: Poster

Thursday, March 13, 2008, 16:30–19:00, Poster C2

Photoassociation of ultracold atoms by shaped ultrashort pulses — •Simone Götz¹, Wenzel Salzmann¹, Terry Mullins¹, Magnus Albert¹, Judith Eng¹, Roland Wester¹, Matthias Weidemüller¹, Andrea Merli², Fransizka Sauer², Fabian Weise², Steffan Weber², Mateusz Plewicki², Ludger Wöste², and Albrecht Lindinger² — ¹Physikalisches Institut, Universität Freiburg, Herrmann-Herder-Str.3, 79104 Freiburg — ²Institut für Physik, Freie Universität Berlin, Arnimallee 14, D-14195 Berlin

We present experiments on the photoassociation (PA) of ultracold atoms using shaped femtosecond laser pulses. In a pump-probe scheme, molecules are produced in am excited state from an ultracold gas of ⁸⁵Rb atoms, are ionized and mass selectively detected. Pump-pulses are shaped to suppress atomic losses from the trap [1] and address only bound molecular states. The molecular ion signal shows rich coherent interactions between the molecules and the electric field. Quantum dynamical simulations accompany the data, providing detailed insight into the process. Wavepacket motion is a requirement for proposed PA into ground states [2] and was not observed due to rapid wavepacket dispersion. We circumvent this by the use of picosecond pulses with a more suitable bandwidth that is closely matched to the free-bound Franck-Condon factors. A new pulse-shaper design allows high-resolution shaping of such pulses and thus application of coherent control techniques to the PA process in the perturbative domain.
W. Salzmann et al., PRA 73, 023414 (2006)
C. Koch et al., PRA 73, 043409 (2006)