Creation of an Ultracold Gas of Ground-State Dipolar ^{23}Na^{87}Rb Molecules.

Abstract

We report the successful production of an ultracold sample of absolute ground-state ^{23}Na^{87}Rb molecules. Starting from weakly bound Feshbach molecules formed via magnetoassociation, the lowest rovibrational and hyperfine level of the electronic ground state is populated following a high-efficiency and high-resolution two-photon Raman process. The high-purity absolute ground-state samples have up to 8000 molecules and densities of over 10^{11} cm^{-3}. By measuring the Stark shifts induced by external electric fields, we determined the permanent electric dipole moment of the absolute ground-state ^{23}Na^{87}Rb and demonstrated the capability of inducing an effective dipole moment over 1D. Bimolecular reaction between ground-state ^{23}Na^{87}Rb molecules is endothermic, but we still observed a rather fast decay of the molecular sample. Our results pave the way toward investigation of ultracold molecular collisions in a fully controlled manner and possibly to quantum gases of ultracold bosonic molecules with strong dipolar interactions.