Production of the Lowest Vibrational Levels of the Ground State and Spectroscopy of the

Ultracold heteronuclear polar KRb molecules have enjoyed tremendous at-tention for many years now. The presence of a large molecule-fixed dipole moment in the absolute rovibrational ground state (v′ ′ = 0, J ′ ′ = 0) makes external con-trol very convenient, which opens up the prospect of studying various physical phenomena in many areas of physics and chemistry. The methods used so far to produce the absolute ground state of KRb have involved very complicated tech-niques. Molecules formed in weakly bound levels were transferred to the absolute ground state through multiple steps of transfer processes involving several lasers with extremely narrow linewidths. My thesis research demonstrates an alternative simpler method of formation of the lowest vibrational levels of the ground state utilizing photoassociation (PA) combined with radiative decay, which has been so far useful to form ultracold molecules in the higher vibrational levels of the ground state. This thesis presents two main topics of research. The first part of the thesis consists of results describing the scheme which provides a single-step, continuous, and irreversible method of forming KRb molecules in their absolute ground state