EXPLORING THE DIPOLAR GROUND STATE OF ULTRACOLD 6Li40K MOLECULES VIA SINGLET STATES

Abstract

This thesis reports on my experimental and theoretical work involving ultracold 6Li40K molecules. It is motivated by their large permanent electric dipole moment of 3.6 Debye and aims to study many-body physics with dipole-dipole interactions, and to create a quantum degenerate molecular gas of bosonic 6Li40K. To achieve this goal this thesis tackles high-resolution spectroscopy of the excited and ground state molecular potentials to identify a pathway for the coherent transfer of weakly-bound 6Li40K Feshbach molecules to their absolute ground state via Stimulated Rapid Adiabatic Passage. These bosonic molecules are a prominent platform for quantum simulations of novel dipolar many-body physics, ultracold quantum chemistry, precision measurements of fundamental constants, and quantum information processing.