Colin Bruzewicz

Polar molecules present an exciting new test bed for ultracold physics with applications in numerous fields, such as chemical reaction dynamics, many-body systems, and quantum computation. Creating large samples of these molecules that can be trapped for long times, however, remains an ongoing challenge. We demonstrate the direct formation of vibronic ground state RbCs molecules by photoassociation of ultracold atoms followed by radiative stabilization. From analysis of the relevant free-to-bound and bound-to-bound Franck-Condon factors, we have predicted and experimentally verified a set of photoassociation resonances that lead to efficient creation of molecules in the v=0 level of the lowest electronic ground state. We discuss the prospects for using this method to create and accumulate samples of ultracold polar molecules in their rovibronic ground state.