Long-Lived Ultracold Molecules with Electric and Magnetic Dipole Moments

Phys Rev Lett. 2017 Oct 6;119(14):143001. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.143001. Epub 2017 Oct 2.

Abstract

We create fermionic dipolar ^{23}Na^{6}Li molecules in their triplet ground state from an ultracold mixture of ^{23}Na and ^{6}Li. Using magnetoassociation across a narrow Feshbach resonance followed by a two-photon stimulated Raman adiabatic passage to the triplet ground state, we produce 3×10^{4} ground state molecules in a spin-polarized state. We observe a lifetime of 4.6 s in an isolated molecular sample, approaching the p-wave universal rate limit. Electron spin resonance spectroscopy of the triplet state was used to determine the hyperfine structure of this previously unobserved molecular state.