Polyatomic ultralong range Rydberg molecules

Abstract

In cold and ultracold mixtures of atoms and molecules, Rydberg interactions with surrounding atoms or molecules may, under certain conditions, lead to the formation of special long-range Rydberg molecules [1,2,3]. These exotic molecules provide an excellent toolkit for manipulation and control of interatomic and atom-molecule interactions, with applications in ultracold chemistry, quantum information processing and many-body quantum physics. In this talk, we will discuss ultralong-range polyatomic Rydberg molecules formed when a heteronuclear diatomic molecule is bound to a Rydberg atom [3,4]. The binding mechanism appears due to anisotropic scattering of the Rydberg electron from the permanent electric dipole moment of the polar molecule. We propose an experimentally realizable scheme to produce these triatomic ultralong-range Rydberg molecules in ultracold RbCs traps, which might use the excitation of cesium or rubidium [5]. By exploiting the Rydberg electron-molecule anisotropic dipole interaction, we induce a near resonant coupling of the non-zero quantum defect Rydberg levels with the RbCs molecule in an excited rotational level. This coupling enhances the binding of the triatomic ultralong-range Rydberg molecule and produces favorable Franck-Condon factors. References [1] C. H. Greene, A. S. Dickinson, and H. R. Sadeghpour, Phys. Rev. Lett. 85, 2458 (2000). [2] S. T. Rittenhouse and H. R. Sadeghpour, Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 243002 (2010). [3] V. Bendkowsky, B. Butscher, J. Nipper, J. P. Shaffer, R. Löw, and T. Pfau, Nature 458, 1005 (2009). [4] R. González-Férez, H. R. Sadeghpour, and P. Schmelcher, New J. Phys. 17, 013021 (2015). [5] R. González-Férez, S.T. Rittenhouse, P. Schmelcher and H.R. Sadeghpour, J. Phys. B 53, 074002 (2020)."