Making and Probing Bose-Einstein Condensates of Polar Molecules

As a postdoc at Columbia, my lab realized the first BEC of polar molecules. By eliminating two- and three-body collisional losses via double microwave shielding, gases of sodium-cesium molecules are evaporatively cooled to quantum degeneracy. The BEC reveals itself via a bimodal momentum distribution when the phase-space density exceeds one. In this talk, I will share our latest insights and detail how I will help grow this new field at the University of Virginia.