External field control of spin-dependent rotational decoherence of ultracold polar molecules

Abstract

We determine trapping conditions for ultracold polar molecules, where pairs of internal states experience identical trapping potentials. Such conditions could ensure that detrimental effects of inevitable inhomogeneities across an ultracold sample are significantly reduced. In particular, we investigate the internal rovibronic and hyperfine quantum states of ultracold fermionic ground-state 40K87Rb polar molecules, when static magnetic, static electric and trapping laser fields are simultaneously applied. Understanding the effect of changing the relative orientation or polarisation of these three fields is of crucial importance for the creation of decoherence-free subspaces built from two or more rovibronic states. Moreover, we evaluate the induced dipole moment of the molecule in the presence of these fields, which will allow control of interactions between molecules in different sites of an optical lattice, and study the influence of the interaction anisotropy on the ability to entangle polar molecules. © 2013 Taylor & Francis.