Observation of Photoassociation Resonances in Ultracold Atom-Molecule Collisions

We report on the observation of photoassociation resonances in ultracold collisions between ^{23}Na^{40}K molecules and ^{40}K atoms. We perform photoassociation in a long-wavelength optical dipole trap to form deeply bound triatomic molecules in electronically excited states. The atom-molecule Feshbach resonance is used to enhance the free-bound Franck-Condon overlap. The photoassociation into well-defined quantum states of excited triatomic molecules is identified by observing resonantly enhanced loss features. These loss features depend on the polarization of the photoassociation lasers, allowing us to assign rotational quantum numbers. The observation of ultracold atom-molecule photoassociation resonances paves the way toward preparing ground-state triatomic molecules, provides a new high-resolution spectroscopy technique for polyatomic molecules, and is also important to atom-molecule Feshbach resonances.