Observation of a Bose-Einstein condensate of dipolar molecules

We report on the realization of a BEC of dipolar molecules [1]. By strongly suppressing two- and three-body losses via double microwave shielding, we evaporatively cool gases of sodium-cesium molecules to quantum degeneracy. The BEC reveals itself via a bimodal distribution when the phase-space density exceeds one. BECs with a condensate fraction of 60(10) % and a temperature of 6(2) nK are created and found to be stable with a lifetime close to 2 seconds.

[1] “Observation of Bose-Einstein condensation in a gas of dipolar molecules,” Bigagli, N., Yuan, W., Zhang, S., Bulatovic, B., Karman, T., Stevenson, I., Will, S., arXiv:2312.10965 (2023).