Reaction interferometry with ultracold molecules

Abstract

We propose to coherently control the ultracold 2KRb → K₂ + Rb₂ reaction product state distribution via quantum interference. By leveraging that the nuclear spin degrees of freedom in the reaction maintain coherence, which was demonstrated in Liu, Zhu et al., arXiv, 2023, arXiv:2310.07620, https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2310.07620, we explore the concept of a “reaction interferometer”. Such an interferometer involves splitting one KRb molecular cloud into two, imprinting a well-defined relative phase between them, recombining the clouds for reactions, and measuring the product state distribution. We show that the interference patterns provide a mechanism to coherently control the product states, and specific product channels also serve as an entanglement witness of the atoms in the reactant KRb molecule.