Production of ultracold Cs*Yb molecules by photoassociation

Abstract

We report the production of ultracold heteronuclear Cs$^*$Yb molecules through one-photon photoassociation applied to an ultracold atomic mixture of Cs and Yb confined in an optical dipole trap. We use trap-loss spectroscopy to detect molecular states below the Cs($^{2}P_{1/2}$) + Yb($^{1}S_{0}$) asymptote. For $^{133}$Cs$^{174}$Yb, we observe 13 rovibrational states with binding energies up to $\sim$500 GHz. For each rovibrational state we observe two resonances associated with the Cs hyperfine structure and show that the hyperfine splitting in the diatomic molecule decreases for more deeply bound states. In addition, we produce ultracold fermionic $^{133}$Cs$^{173}$Yb and bosonic $^{133}$Cs$^{172}$Yb and $^{133}$Cs$^{170}$Yb molecules. From mass scaling, we determine the number of bound states supported by the 2(1/2) excited-state potential to be 154 or 155.