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Sticky collisions of ultracold RbCs molecules

Gregory, Philip D.; Frye, Matthew D.; Blackmore, Jacob A.; Bridge, Elizabeth M.; Sawant, Rahul; Hutson, Jeremy M.; Cornish, Simon L.

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Authors

Dr Phil Gregory p.d.gregory@durham.ac.uk
Assistant Professor - Royal Society University Research Fellow

Jacob A. Blackmore

Rahul Sawant



Abstract

Understanding and controlling collisions is crucial to the burgeoning field of ultracold molecules. All experiments so far have observed fast loss of molecules from the trap. However, the dominant mechanism for collisional loss is not well understood when there are no allowed 2-body loss processes. Here we experimentally investigate collisional losses of nonreactive ultracold 87Rb133Cs molecules, and compare our findings with the sticky collision hypothesis that pairs of molecules form long-lived collision complexes. We demonstrate that loss of molecules occupying their rotational and hyperfine ground state is best described by second-order rate equations, consistent with the expectation for complex-mediated collisions, but that the rate is lower than the limit of universal loss. The loss is insensitive to magnetic field but increases for excited rotational states. We demonstrate that dipolar effects lead to significantly faster loss for an incoherent mixture of rotational states.

Citation

Gregory, P. D., Frye, M. D., Blackmore, J. A., Bridge, E. M., Sawant, R., Hutson, J. M., & Cornish, S. L. (2019). Sticky collisions of ultracold RbCs molecules. Nature Communications, 10(1), Article 3104. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-11033-y

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jun 13, 2019
Online Publication Date Jul 15, 2019
Publication Date Jul 15, 2019
Deposit Date Jul 19, 2019
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal Nature Communications
Publisher Nature Research
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 10
Issue 1
Article Number 3104
DOI https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-11033-y

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