We have succeeded in forming NaLi molecules in their triplet ground state from an ultracold mixture of Na and Li atoms. This is done in two steps. First, loosely bound Feshbach molecules are created by careful sweeping of magnetic field around a Feshbach resonance, where the energy for a state of two free atoms becomes degenerate with the energy for the bound molecular state of the two atoms, but with different internal electronic and nuclear spins is done. A magnetic field can be used to tune the energy difference between these two states to zero because the different spin orientations lead to different magnetic moments of the two-atom system. Second, loosely bound molecules are transferred to tightly bound triplet ground state molecules via Stimulated Raman adiabatic passage(STIRAP).
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