Coherent manipulation of the internal state of ultracold 87Rb133Cs molecules with multiple microwave fields

Abstract

We explore coherent multi-photon processes in ⁸⁷Rb¹³³Cs molecules using 3-level lambda and ladder configurations of rotational and hyperfine states, and discuss their relevance to future applications in quantum computation and quantum simulation. In the lambda configuration, we demonstrate the driving of population between two hyperfine levels of the rotational ground state via a two-photon Raman transition. Such pairs of states may be used in the future as a quantum memory, and we measure a Ramsey coherence time for a superposition of these states of 58(9) ms. In the ladder configuration, we show that we can generate and coherently populate microwave dressed states via the observation of an Autler–Townes doublet. We demonstrate that we can control the strength of this dressing by varying the intensity of the microwave coupling field. Finally, we perform spectroscopy of the rotational states of ⁸⁷Rb¹³³Cs up to N = 6, highlighting the potential of ultracold molecules for quantum simulation in synthetic dimensions. By fitting the measured transition frequencies we determine a new value of the centrifugal distortion coefficient D_v = h × 207.3(2) Hz.