Ultracold interactions between ions and polar molecules

We propose a platform for observing and controlling the interactions between atomic ions and a quantum gas of polar molecules in the ultracold regime. This approach is based on the combination of several recently developed methods in two so-far complementary research domains: ion-atom collisions and...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Leon Karpa, Olivier Dulieu
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: American Physical Society 2025-06-01
Series:Physical Review Research
Online Access:http://doi.org/10.1103/7zz8-qk2c
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:We propose a platform for observing and controlling the interactions between atomic ions and a quantum gas of polar molecules in the ultracold regime. This approach is based on the combination of several recently developed methods in two so-far complementary research domains: ion-atom collisions and studies of ultracold polar molecules. In contrast to collisions between ions and ground-state atoms, which are dominated by losses due to three-body recombination (TBR) already at densities far below those typical for quantum degenerate ensembles, our proposal makes use of polar molecules, their rich level structure, and sensitivity to electric fields to design effective interaction potentials where ion-neutral TBR losses and molecule-molecule losses due to sticky collisions could be strongly suppressed. This may open a broad range of applications including precise control of collisional properties in molecular ensembles using ions, quantum simulations, and cold quantum chemistry between polyatomic molecules.
ISSN:2643-1564