Probing the interaction energy of two $^{85}$Rb atoms in an optical tweezer via spin-motion coupling

Abstract

The inherent polarization gradients in tight optical tweezers can be used to couple the atomic spins to the two-body motion under the action of a microwave spin-flip transition, so that such a spin-motion coupling offers an important control knob on the motional states of optically trapped two colliding atoms. Here, after preparing two elastically scattering $^{85}$Rb atoms in the three-dimensional ground-state in the optical tweezer, we employed this control in order to probe the colliding energies of elastic and inelastic channels. The combination of microwave spectra and corresponding s-wave pseudopotential model allows us to infer the effect of the state-dependent trapping potentials on the elastic colliding energies, as well as to reveal how the presence of inelastic interactions affects elastic part of the relative potential. Our work shows that the spin-motion coupling in a tight optical tweezer expand the experimental toolbox for fundamental studies of ultracold collisions in the two body systems with reactive collisions, and potentially for that of more complex interactions, such as optically trapped atom-molecule and molecule-molecule interactions.