Vibrational relaxation of ultracold lithium dimers

Summary form only given. Laser cooling and trapping of atoms has enabled some of the most exciting recent advances in atomic physics, including the achievement of Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC). Efforts are now underway to trap ultracold molecules in order to study chemical reactions and to investigate BEC of larger particles. In the atomic BEC experiments, the atoms are cooled to sub-/spl mu/K temperatures so the energy spread of the atoms which are not in the condensate is small (/spl les/20 kHz) and that of the condensate itself is zero. Therefore, a quantum degenerate gas enables an unprecedented level of spectroscopic precision. We report two-photon photoassociation of quantum degenerate /sup 7/Li atoms into the least-bound vibrational level of the ground-state triplet potential of /sup 7/Li/sub 2/. These molecules are magnetically trappable by virtue of their electronic magnetic moment.