In recent years, ultracold molecules have become an active research field driven by several motivations, ranging from ultracold chemistry and attainment of degenerate quantum gases to quantum information processing. Neutral ultracold molecules are trapped and controlled using optical lattices, which require very complex experimental setups. In contrast, molecular ions can be trapped easily using electric field. The goal of this work is to find diatomic molecules and ions with large dipole moments and long vibrational state lifetimes, which can be effectively cooled, trapped, and controlled. We compute the potential energy curves, the permanent dipole moment curves, and the lifetimes of the vibrational states of the heteronuclear alkali dimers XY (X, Y = Li, Na, K, Rb, Cs) and alkali-alkaline earth ions XZ+ (Z= Be, Mg, Ca, Sr, Ba) in the ground electronic states using the coupled cluster with singles doubles and triples (CCSDT) method. The inclusion of the non-perturbative triple excitations was shown to be crucial for obtaining the accurate potential energy curves. The large one-electron basis set with additional core functions is required for accurate dipole moment calculations. Using potential energy and dipole moment curves we compute the vibrational wave functions, transition dipole moments and the lifetime of vibrational states. We discuss the effects of spontaneous emission, and stimulated emission and absorption induced by black body radiation on the vibrational state lifetimes.

Lifetime of the vibrational states of ultracold diatomic molecules and ions

248th National Meeting (2014)

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