Coherent Optical Creation of a Single Molecule
Yichao Yu, Kenneth Wang, Jonathan D. Hood, Lewis R. B. Picard, Jessie T. Zhang, William B. Cairncross, Jeremy M. Hutson, Rosario González‐Férez, T. Rosenband, Kang-Kuen Ni
Abstract
We report coherent association of atoms into a single weakly bound NaCs molecule in an optical tweezer through an optical Raman transition. The Raman technique uses a deeply bound electronic excited intermediate state to achieve a large transition dipole moment while reducing photon scattering. Starting from two atoms in their relative motional ground state, we achieve an optical transfer efficiency of 69%. The molecules have a binding energy of 770.2 MHz at 8.83(2) G. This technique does not rely on Feshbach resonances or narrow excited-state lines and may allow a wide range of molecular species to be assembled atom by atom.