Vibrational ladder-descending photostabilization of a weakly bound molecule: Quantum optimal control with a genetic algorithm

In recent decades, considerable experimental and theoretical efforts have been dedicated

to the formation of diatomic molecules from cold (1 mK<T<1 K) and ultracold (T<1 mK)

gasses. Promising methods for this task are magnetoassociation and photoassociation,

followed by a rovibrational stabilization scheme that can lead the molecule to its absolute

ground state. We propose a three-step methodology consisting of an intracurve ladder

descending scheme followed by a pump-dump scheme. We computationally implement the

first scheme for KRb, initially trapped in a Feshbach resonance of the first triplet state. We

optimize the laser pulse using a genetic algorithm