Effective potential and scattering length of shielded polar molecules
Phys. Rev. A 112, 043306 – Published 9 October, 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/dw1b-g5cs
Abstract
We investigate the effective potential and scattering length of ultracold polar molecules under different shielding techniques. First, we derive the effective potential for two polar molecules in the presence of (i) an elliptical polarization field alone, (ii) combined elliptical and linear polarization fields, and (iii) combined elliptical polarization and static fields. The effective potential is then expressed as a sum of a zero-range contact interaction and a long-range dipolar interaction under the Born approximation. We find that the methods (i) and (ii) only partially suppress attractive interactions, while the method (ii) allows for the construction of bound states with different polarization shapes. The last shielding method (iii) can achieve complete cancellation of residual attractive forces [Micheli et al., Phys. Rev. A 76, 043604 (2007); Gorshkov et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 073201 (2008)], which is particularly significant for maintaining quantum degeneracy in ultracold dipolar systems. Our results provide a comprehensive understanding of the effective potential and scattering length of shielding polar molecules, which is crucial for studying many-body physics in ultracold dipolar systems.
