Effects of Hyperfine Mixing of Rydberg-ground molecular potentials in Rb

Rydberg molecules formed by the scattering between a ground-state atom and a Rydberg electron can offer new insight into the nature of atomic interactions and molecular structure. Shallow bound states that arise from hyperfine-induced mixing of singlet and triplet channels have recently been predicted [1] and observed for P-states in Cs [2] and S-states in $^{87}$Rb [3]. Here we present progress toward characterizing Rb (nD + 5S$_{1/2}$) molecules, including a comparison of the hyperfine-mixing effects between the two isotopes ($^{85}$Rb and $^{87}$Rb). \\[4pt] [1] D. A. Anderson, S. A. Miller, and G. Raithel, Phys. Rev. A \textbf{90}, 062518 (2014). \\[0pt] [2] H. Sassmannshausen, F. Merkt, and J. Deiglmayr, Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{114}, 133201 (2015). \\[0pt] [3] F. B\"{o}ttcher \textit{et al.}, arXiv:1510.01097v1 (2015).