Creation of ultracold ^{87}Rb^{133}Cs molecules in the rovibrational ground state

• Published in: Physical review letters 2014-12, Vol.113 (25), p.255301-255301
• Main Authors: Molony, Peter K, Gregory, Philip D, Ji, Zhonghua, Lu, Bo, Köppinger, Michael P, Le Sueur, C Ruth, Blackley, Caroline L, Hutson, Jeremy M, Cornish, Simon L
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1079-7114

We report the creation of a sample of over 1000 ultracold ^{87}Rb^{133}Cs molecules in the lowest rovibrational ground state, from an atomic mixture of ^{87}Rb and ^{133}Cs, by magnetoassociation on an interspecies Feshbach resonance followed by stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP). We measure the binding energy of the RbCs molecule to be hc×3811.576(1)  cm^{-1} and the |v^{''}=0,J^{''}=0⟩ to |v^{''}=0,J^{''}=2⟩ splitting to be h×2940.09(6)  MHz. Stark spectroscopy of the rovibrational ground state yields an electric dipole moment of 1.225(3)(8) D, where the values in parentheses are the statistical and systematic uncertainties, respectively. We can access a space-fixed dipole moment of 0.355(2)(4) D, which is substantially higher than in previous work.