Making ultracold molecules in a two-color pump-dump photoassociation scheme using chirped pulses

This theoretical paper investigates the formation of ground state molecules from ultracold cesium atoms in a two-color scheme. Following previous work on photoassociation with chirped picosecond pulses [ Luc-Koenig et al. Phys. Rev. A 70 033414 (2004)], we investigate stabilization by a second (dump) pulse. By appropriately choosing the dump pulse parameters and time delay with respect to the photoassociation pulse, we show that a large number of deeply bound molecules are created in the ground triplet state. We discuss (i) broad-bandwidth dump pulses which maximize the probability to form molecules while creating a broad vibrational distribution as well as (ii) narrow-bandwidth pulses populating a single vibrational ground state level, bound by 113 cm⁻¹. The use of chirped pulses makes the two-color scheme robust, simple, and efficient.