Towards the Creation of Degenerate Fermionic/Bosonic NaK Molecular Gases with Long-range Dipolar Interactions

Ultracold quantum gases are an ideal testbed for simulating complex many-body quantum behavior. Especially, the creation of degenerate gases of dipolar molecules will give access to novel quantum phases of matter such as exotic superfluids and quantum crystals, and will also realize quantum computing platforms based on molecular qubits.

In this poster, we present our recent progress towards the creation of a degenerate gas of strongly dipolar fermionic/bosonic ²³Na^40,41K molecules. We prepare quantum mixtures of Na and K atoms in an oblate optical dipole trap and investigate interspecies Feshbach resonances. A narrow linewidth Raman laser system is constructed to implement a coherent two-photon STIRAP transfer of NaK Feshbach molecules to their absolute ground state. Further experimental progress and outlook will be presented.