Prof. Ian Stevenson
Department of Physics
University of Virginia

Abstract

Recently, the first BEC of polar molecules was realized at Columbia. By eliminating two- and three-body collisional losses via double microwave shielding, gases of sodium-cesium molecules are evaporatively cooled to quantum degeneracy. Dipolar interactions can be induced by unbalancing the two microwave fields or by inducing ellipticity in one of the fields. As the dipolar interactions increase, the gas transitions to either self-bound droplets or droplet arrays. For very strong dipolar interactions we estimate that their characteristic length scale can exceed the interparticle separation. In totality, polar molecules offer a new paradigm for quantum gases with strong and flexible long-range interactions.