Magnetic field dependent interactions in an ultracold Li-Yb(³P<inf>2</inf>) mixture

Abstract

© 2015 IOP Publishing Ltd and Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft. Magnetic Feshbach resonances have allowed great success in the production of ultracold diatomic molecules from bi-alkali mixtures, but have so far eluded observation in mixtures of alkali and alkaline-earth-like atoms. Inelastic collisional properties of ultracold atomic systems exhibit resonant behavior in the vicinity of such resonances, providing a detection signature. We study magnetic field dependent inelastic effects via atom loss spectroscopy in an ultracold heteronuclear mixture of alkali 6Li in the ground state and alkaline-earth-like 174Yb in an excited electronic metastable state (3P2, mJ = -1). We observe a variation of the interspecies inelastic two-body rate coefficient by nearly one order of magnitude over a 100-520 G magnetic field range. By comparing to ab initio calculations we link our observations to interspecies Feshbach resonances arising from anisotropic interactions in this novel collisional system.