Abstract
The dipolar collision between ultracold polar molecules is an important topic both by its own right from the fundamental point of view and for the successful exploration of many-body physics with strong and long-range dipolar interactions. Here, we report the investigation of collisions between ultracold ground-state sodium-rubidium molecules in electric fields with induced electric dipole moments as large as 0.7$\;$D. We observe a step-wise enhancement of losses due to the coupling between different partial waves induced by the increasingly stronger anisotropic dipolar interactions. Varying the temperature of our sample, we find good agreement with theoretical loss rates assuming complex formation as the main loss process. Our results shed new light on the understanding of complex molecular collisions in the presence of strong dipolar interactions and also demonstrate the versatility of modifying molecular interactions with electric fields.
Highlights
Recent years have witnessed many breakthroughs in quantum simulation of strongly correlated many-body problems with dilute gases of ultracold particles [1,2]
Popular systems for realizing dipolar interactions include special atomic species with large magnetic moments which can interact via magnetic dipole-dipole interactions [3,4,5], highly excited Rydberg atoms with gigantic electric dipole moments which can interact via strong electric dipole-dipole interactions [6,7,8], and ultracold polar molecules (UPMs) which have permanent electric dipole moments (PEDMs) μ0 typically on the order of one atomic unit [9,10]
We investigate the ultralow energy dipolar collisions in a previously unexplored regime
Summary
Recent years have witnessed many breakthroughs in quantum simulation of strongly correlated many-body problems with dilute gases of ultracold particles [1,2]. The anisotropic nature of the dipole-dipole interaction can induce couplings between the relative motional angular momenta (partial waves L) and bring significant modifications to the long-range interaction potential and the collisions. Such dipolar effects between collisions of UPMs were first and so far only observed with relatively small μ in 40K87Rb molecules which are identical fermions and chemically reactive [25]. Following the increase of the dipolar interaction, we observe this transition as a pronounced enhancement of molecular losses with stepwise features as the result of the increasingly stronger modification to the effective interaction potentials of higher and higher partial waves
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