Controllable binding of polar molecules and meta-stability of 1-D gases with attractive dipole forces

Abstract

We explore one-dimensional (1-D) samples of ultracold polar molecules with attractive dipole-dipole interactions and show the existence of a repulsive barrier due to a strong quadrupole interaction between molecules. This barrier can stabilize a gas of ultracold KRb molecules and even lead to long-range wells supporting bound states between molecules. The properties of these wells can be controlled by external electric fields, allowing the formation of long polymer-like chains of KRb, and studies of quantum phase transitions by varying the effective interaction between molecules. We discuss the generalization of those results to other systems.