Driving the formation of the RbCs dimer by a laser pulse: A nonlinear-dynamics approach

We study the formation of the RbCs molecule by an intense laser pulse using nonlinear dynamics. The system is modeled by a two-degree-of-freedom rovibrational Hamiltonian, which includes the ground electronic potential energy curve of the diatomic molecule and the interaction of the molecular polarizability with the electric field of the laser. As the laser intensity increases, we observe that the formation probability first increases and then decreases after reaching a maximum.

We show that the analysis can be simplified to the investigation of the long-range interaction between the two atoms. We conclude that the formation is due to a very small change in the radial momentum of the dimer induced by the laser pulse. From this observation, we build a reduced one-dimensional model which allows us to derive an approximate expression of the formation probability as a function of the laser intensity.