Abstract: Recently, we have created the first BECs of dipolar molecules [1,2]. We evaporatively cool a gas of sodium-cesium molecules to below 10 nanokelvin, deep in the quantum degenerate regime. The BECs live for several seconds. This dramatic improvement over previous attempts to cool molecules is enabled by collisional shielding via microwave dressing, suppressing inelastic losses by four orders of magnitude. We also observe that microwave dressing provides an exceptional level of tunability of dipole-dipole interactions, enabling novel phases of matter in molecular quantum liquids.

In this talk, I will discuss our experimental approach, share latest insights, and give an outlook on novel opportunities enabled by molecular BECs for many-body quantum physics, quantum simulation, and quantum computing. In addition, I will give a brief overview of our broader efforts in quantum. These include recent advances on single atom trapping in metasurface optical tweezer arrays [3] and collaborative efforts with Brookhaven National Lab to realize a quantum network in the greater New York area

References:

• [1] Bigagli, Yuan, Zhang, et al., Observation of Bose-Einstein condensation of dipolar molecules, Nature 631, 289-293 (2024)
• [2] Bigagli, et al., Collisionally stable gas of bosonic dipolar ground state molecules, Nature Physics 19, 1579-1584 (2023)
• [3] Holman, Xu, et al., Trapping of single atoms in metasurface optical tweezer arrays, arXiv:2411.05321 (2024)