Singlet Pathway to the Dipolar Ground State of Ultracold 6Li40K Molecules

Abstract

Ultracold molecules are excellent candidates for studying quantum simulation, quantum chemistry, and quantum computation. This thesis presents the experimental preparation and investigation of the rovibrational structure of ultracold 6Li40K molecules using precision laser spectroscopy. The energy of the rovibrational ground state of 6Li40K molecules was found via a singlet spectroscopic pathway, in which only singlet transitions are involved for one-photon and two-photon spectroscopy. Based on the measurement results, two stable lasers have been built for probing the dark resonance of the 6Li40K molecules. Although the experimental attempt to transfer the molecules to their rovibrational ground state using a method called stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) did not succeed, several suggestions based on theoretical analysis and experimental characterization have been proposed for improving the transfer efficiency in the near future.