Tunable disorder in a crystal of cold polar molecules

Abstract

We show that a two-species mixture of polar molecules trapped on an optical lattice gives rise to a system of rotational excitons in the presence of tunable impurities. The exciton-impurity interactions can be controlled by an external electric field, which can be exploited for quantum simulation of localization phenomena in disordered media. We demonstrate that an external electric field can be used to induce resonant enhancement of the exciton-impurity scattering cross sections and delocalization of excitonic states in a correlated one-dimensional disorder potential.