Trapping polar molecules by surface acoustic waves

Abstract

We propose a method to trap polar molecules with the electric force induced by the surface acoustic wave (SAW) on piezoelectric materials. In this approach, the electric force is perpendicular to the moving direction of the polar molecules, and is used to control the positions of trapped polar molecules in the direction orthogonal to the acoustic transmission. By virtue of an external electric force, the SAW-induced electric field can trap the polar molecules into single-layer or multilayer lattices. The arrangement of molecules can affect the binding energy and localization of the molecule array. Then the one- or two-dimensional trapped polar molecule arrays can be used to construct the Bose-Hubbard (BH) model, whose energy and dynamics are affected by the localizations of the trapped molecules. We find that the phase transitions between the superfluid and Mott insulator based on trapped polar molecule BH model can be modulated by the SAW-induced electric potential. Published by the American Physical Society 2024