Producing cold and ultracold Cs2 and CsH molecules through photoassociation and reactions

Several different experiments involving the making of cold and ultracold molecules are performed and proposed. Ultracold cesium molecules are produced in a magneto-optical trap (MOT) by photoassociation near the 6P j, 7Pj, 9S 1/2, 6D3/2, 7D3/2 and doubly excited asymptotes. Perturbation effects related to resonant channel coupling were observed in photoassociation spectra below the 6 P1/2 asymptote. Such effects are used to illustrate a ground state ultracold molecule formation mechanism, which can also be formed in one step photoassociation to the double minimum 31S+m state. In addition, a new technique of making cold molecules of cesium hydride is proposed, using a cold hydrogen beam source and a cesium MOT. Due to reaction energetics, the formed CsH molecules should be in their lowest rovibrational states.