Delta-kick collimation of heteronuclear Feshbach molecules
We present a theoretical study of delta-kick collimation (DKC) applied to heteronuclear Feshbach molecules, focusing on both condensed and thermal ensembles across various interaction and temperature regimes. We demonstrate that DKC enables significant reductions in molecular cloud expansion energies and beam divergence, achieving expansion energies in the picokelvin range, comparable to state-of-the-art results obtained experimentally with atoms. Furthermore, we show that vibrational and translational motions remain strongly decoupled throughout the process, and that the vibrational energy remains well below the molecular binding energy, thereby ensuring molecular stability during the delta kick. This work paves the way for advanced experimental sequences involving degenerate ground-state molecules, light-pulse molecular interferometry, and applications of dual-species precision measurements, such as testing the universality of free fall.
Authors
- Jose D'Incao
- Ernst M. Rasel (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7861-8829)
- Jim Williams
- Naceur Gaaloul (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8233-5848)
- Éric Charron (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1660-6368)
- Torben Schulze (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4658-2849)
- Timothé Estrampes (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-0754-9028)
Institutions
- Leibniz University Hannover (DE)
- California Institute of Technology (US)
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory (US)
- Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics (US)
- University of Colorado Boulder (US)
- University of Colorado System (US)
- University of Massachusetts Boston (US)
- Institut des Sciences Moléculaires d'Orsay (FR)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Physical Review Research
- Published
- 2025-10-03
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1103/858b-f2k9
- Primary Topic
- Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00