Direct absorption imaging of ultracold polar molecules

authored by

D. Wang, B. Neyenhuis, M. H.G. De Miranda, K. K. Ni, S. Ospelkaus, D. S. Jin, J. Ye

Abstract

We demonstrate a scheme for direct absorption imaging of an ultracold ground-state polar molecular gas near quantum degeneracy. Imaging molecules without closed optical cycling transitions is challenging. Our technique relies on photon-shot-noise-limited absorption imaging on a strong but open bound-bound molecular transition. We present a systematic characterization of this imaging technique. Using this technique combined with time-of-flight expansion, we demonstrate the capability to determine momentum and spatial distributions for the molecular gas. With its capability of imaging molecules in arbitrary external fields, we anticipate that this technique will find many applications in the study of molecular quantum gases.

External Organisation(s)

University of Colorado Boulder
California Institute of Caltech (Caltech)
Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ)

Type

Article

Journal

Physical Review A - Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics

Volume

81

ISSN

1050-2947

Publication date

25.06.2010

Publication status

Published

Peer reviewed

Yes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

Electronic version(s)

https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.81.061404 (Access: Unknown)