We have succeeded in forming NaLi molecules in their triplet ground state from an ultracold mixture of Na and Li atoms. This is done in two steps. First, loosely bound Feshbach molecules are created by careful sweeping of magnetic field around a Feshbach resonance, where the energy for a state of two free atoms becomes degenerate with the energy for the bound molecular state of the two atoms, but with different internal electronic and nuclear spins is done. Second, loosely bound molecules are transferred to tightly bound triplet ground state molecules via Stimulated Raman adiabatic passage(STIRAP).
The NaLi molecule, the lightest bi-alkali molecule, in the triplet ground state have long collisional lifetime which allow us to investigate the complexity of chemical reactions by finding links to scattering theory. We have previously observed internal state dependent collision of Na-NaLi mixture and have seen favorable collisional properties in their fully stretched states enabling collisional cooling of NaLi molecules. We are interested in the observation of magnetically controlled collision of Na-NaLi mixture. This can give positive influence on understanding molecular collisions in the quantum regime and discovering more efficient way of sympathetic cooling of molecules.
Our recent work can be found here.
