Ultracold Atoms and Molecules

The production, trapping, and manipulation of ultracold atoms and molecules are a forefront area of NIST research. This project concentrates on the theory of atomic and molecular collisions and interactions. The ability to gain precise control over these interactions through tunable magnetic, electric, or electromagnetic fields is a key to the successful applications of gases or lattices of such atoms or molecules to precision metrology, fundamental science, quantum information, quantum computation, or quantum analog simulation of complex phenomena.

The main thrusts of this research are to:

*Develop accurate computational models of near-zero-energy scattering and bound states of alkali-metal atomic and molecular species with an emphasis on precise, magnetically tunable Feshbach resonance control of such states.

*Develop simplified analytic and semi-analytic models for increased understanding and simplified fitting of experimental data on controlled resonant phenomena.

*Develop theories for ground and excited state interactions, including optically tunable resonances, for quasi-two-electron species such as Strontium or Ytterbium for applications to atomic clocks, quantum information, and quantum simulation.

*Develop theories and computational models for collisions and interactions of polar molecules for control of dipolar quantum gases and lattices and for ultracold chemistry.

*Adapt theories and computational models for atoms and molecules to reduced dimensional optical lattice systems.