Photoassociation Project

Communicating with Dr. Dan Elliott and his Ph.D. student John Lorenz, I found out that I would be working on the photoassociation (photoassociation - the association of two atoms, under the influence of laser light, to form a diatomic molecule) project.

We are working on an experimental project in which our goal is to produce ultracold LiRb molecules in an atomic Magneto-Optical Trap (MOT).  We are currently able to cool and trap rubidium atoms and lithium atoms concurrently.  Researchers in other laboratories have already demonstrated the ability to assemble other diatomic molecules in a MOT through a process known as Photoassociation, and we will use similar schemes to demonstrate this in LiRb.  LiRb is attractive in that it has a relatively large permanent electric dipole moment.  We also have in mind a scheme to drive this molecule to its lowest electronic, vibrational and rotational state that looks promising, although we have a lot of work to do before we achieve this goal.  Ultimately, we look to creating superposition states that might be of interest as quantum logic gates.