Project Details
Spectroscopy of alkali alkaline-earth molecules for applications in ultracold ensembles of paramagnetic molecules
Subject Area
Optics, Quantum Optics and Physics of Atoms, Molecules and Plasmas
Term
from 2014 to 2021
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 268735758
Ultracold molecules are in the focus of present research in the field of metrological research, fundamental questions on time dependence of fundamental physical constants, ultracold chemistry and quantum gases or quantum information. This activity applies the diatomic alkali and alkaline earth molecules with their diamagnetic ground states. Recently, at few places experiments are undertaken to open this field to paramagnetic species like RbSr, LiYb and RbYb. This would allow the preparation of unexplored systems of ultracold gases. But in this class of molecules (pairs of alkali atoms and alkaline earth atoms) spectroscopic data are greatly missing, thus the planning of experiments relies mainly on ab initio calculations, which regularly deliver good guidance, but not sufficiently precise and quantitative predictions. With our proposal we will systematically study the spectroscopy of this class of molecules by representative examples and derive molecular interaction potentials, spin-rotation and hyperfine interactions, needed for the evaluation of the above mentioned efforts on RbSr, LiYb and RbYb. This will also provide references for checking and improving ab initio calculations. Because of our very successful work on diatomic alkali and alkaline earth molecules we are well prepared in the experimental setup and for the theoretical evaluation of expected dense spectra.
DFG Programme
Research Grants