Hyperfine energy levels of alkali-metal dimers: Ground-state homonuclear molecules in magnetic fields

Aldegunde, J.; Hutson, Jeremy M.

doi:10.1103/physreva.79.013401

Hyperfine energy levels of alkali-metal dimers: Ground-state homonuclear molecules in magnetic fields

Aldegunde, J.; Hutson, Jeremy M.

Authors

J. Aldegunde

Professor Jeremy Hutson j.m.hutson@durham.ac.uk
Professor

Abstract

We investigate the hyperfine energy levels and Zeeman splittings for homonuclear alkali-metal dimers in low-lying rotational and vibrational states, which are important for experiments designed to produce quantum gases of deeply bound molecules. We carry out density-functional theory calculations of the nuclear hyperfine coupling constants. For nonrotating states, the zero-field splittings are determined almost entirely by the scalar nuclear spin-spin coupling constant. By contrast with the heteronuclear case, the total nuclear spin remains a good quantum number in a magnetic field. We also investigate levels with rotational quantum number N=1, which have long-range anisotropic quadrupole-quadrupole interactions and may be collisionally stable. For these states the splitting is dominated by nuclear quadrupole coupling for most of the alkali-metal dimers and the Zeeman splittings are considerably more complicated.

Citation

Aldegunde, J., & Hutson, J. M. (2009). Hyperfine energy levels of alkali-metal dimers: Ground-state homonuclear molecules in magnetic fields. Physical Review A, 79(1), Article 013401. https://doi.org/10.1103/physreva.79.013401

Journal Article Type	Article
Publication Date	Jan 1, 2009
Deposit Date	Jun 19, 2013
Publicly Available Date	Jul 12, 2013
Journal	Physical Review A
Print ISSN	1050-2947
Electronic ISSN	1094-1622
Publisher	American Physical Society
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	79
Issue	1
Article Number	013401
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1103/physreva.79.013401