Ian Stevenson, Columbia University
Wednesday, January 22, 2025 - 4:00pm
PAA A-102
Recently, our lab realized the first BEC of polar molecules. By eliminating two- and three-body collisional losses via double microwave shielding, gases of sodium-cesium molecules are evaporatively cooled to quantum degeneracy. The BEC reveals itself via a bimodal momentum distribution when the phase-space density exceeds one. In this talk, I will share our latest insights into controlling the dipolar interactions in the BEC. Notably, we find that as dipolar interactions increase, their characteristic length scale exceeds the interparticle separation, signifying the onset of strong interactions.