Measurement of the permanent electric dipole moment of ultracold ground state 85Rb133Cs molecules by microwave coherent spectroscopy

Abstract

We demonstrate measurement of the permanent electric dipole moment (EDM) of 85Rb133Cs molecules in the absolute vibrational ground state by microwave (MW) coherent spectroscopy. The rotational states of the considered molecules, which are formed from short-range photoassociation of mixed cold atoms, are nondegenerated under external electric field. To measure the EDM based on electric-field-induced shifts of the sublevels of X1Σ+(v = 0, J = 1) rotational state, we utilized a MW coherent spectroscopy, which has a higher resolution than depletion spectroscopy and one-photon MW spectroscopy and can also eliminate the influence from Stark shift of the excited state existing in both spectroscopies above. In order to acquire accurate electric intensity, electromagnetic induced transparency spectroscopy of 85Rb Rydberg atoms is used to implement the calibration. The permanent EDM of 85Rb133Cs molecules is finally determined to be 1.266(15) D, which agrees with the theoretical calculations and is comparable with the value of its isotopic molecule.