Observation of Heteronuclear Feshbach Molecules from a $^{85}$Rb - $^{87}$Rb gas


Abstract in English

We report on the observation of ultracold heteronuclear Feshbach molecules. Starting with a $^{87}$Rb BEC and a cold atomic gas of $^{85}$Rb, we utilize previously unobserved interspecies Feshbach resonances to create up to 25,000 molecules. Even though the $^{85}$Rb gas is non-degenerate we observe a large molecular conversion efficiency due to the presence of a quantum degenerate $^{87}$Rb gas; this represents a key feature of our system. We compare the molecule creation at two different Feshbach resonances with different magnetic-field widths. The two Feshbach resonances are located at $265.44pm0.15$ G and $372.4pm1.3$ G. We also directly measure the small binding energy of the molecules through resonant magnetic-field association.

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