An association sequence suitable for producing ground-state RbCs molecules in optical lattices

To the Editor,
Scipost Physics.

We thank you for giving us the opportunity to address the reviewers’ recommendations and
resubmit the manuscript with minor revision.

We have tried to respond to all the recommendations made. The answers to the referees’
questions and comments are given below. We have mentioned the text where ever we have made
changes in the revised manuscript.

Furthermore, we find some typographical errors in our submitted version. We have corrected
them in the revised manuscript. We also rerun our code to calculate the TDMs for the Stokes transitions, with the updated values of some of the constants given in Table 2 according to ref 59, and we provide the updated numbers in the revised manuscript.

We hope that after going through the answers, you will not hesitate to accept our manuscript
for publication in your esteemed journal.

Thanking you.
Kind regards,
Arpita Das

To answer the queries of the reviewers, we have made the following changes/additions to the texts

1. In Section 2, 1st paragraph of page 3 of the revised manuscript, we have added: " The total parity is $(-1)^L$ and is conserved in a collision, so only states with even values of L can cause resonances in s-wave scattering; scattering; values L = 0, 2, 4, etc. are indicated by labels s, d, g, etc."

2. In Section 3, 1st paragraph of page 5 of the revised manuscript, we have also changed the texts to "At 181.5 G, the transitions for STIRAP were found starting from a model without hyperfine structure, and so required an exhaustive search through the many available transitions by experiment [42]. Here we identify suitable transitions by first constructing a model for the electronically excited state, including hyperfine structure. This is used to calculate the relevant energies and, together with the wavefunctions describing states F and G, the TDMs for the candidate transitions."

3. Our submitted manuscript incorrectly mentioned d6 (instead of d6') in the description of the panel (a) in Section 2. It was a typographical error; we have corrected it to d6' in the revised manuscript.

4. In Section 3, 1st paragraph of page 5 of the revised manuscript, we have added: "The state F has mostly ~a$^3\Sigma^+$ character, because all the contributing states have relatively high spin projections, with $M_F = m_{f_\textrm{Rb}}+m_{f_\textrm{Cs}} \ge 3$."

5. We have modified the texts at the beginning of the 2nd paragraph of page 5 in Section 3 as “The system A$^1 \Sigma^+$-b$^3 \Pi$ has previously been investigated in many different alkali dimers [43–52].

6. We have modified the texts in Section 5 as " The values for the Stokes transitions are within about 50% of experiment, but there is roughly a factor of two difference between the calculated and measured values for the pump transitions".

7. We have added the texts in Section 5: "The differences between the experimental and theoretical values of the TDMs for the pump transitions are probably due to uncertainties in the electronic wavefunctions for the excited states. The calculated TDMs depend strongly on the electronic transition dipole functions, and this dependence is greater for the pump transitions because there is substantial oscillatory cancellation in the radial integrals. "

8. The labeling of Figure 2 has been modified.

9. We have changed the texts in Section 7 on Page 13 to read “…we find that we can drive Rabi oscillations on each of these strong transitions with 100\% contrast; this indicates…"

Furthermore, we have found some typographical errors in our submitted version. We have corrected them in the revised manuscript. We also rerun our code to calculate the TDMs for the Stokes transitions, with the updated values of some of the constants given in Table 2 according to ref 59, and we provide the updated numbers in the revised manuscript.

We have also changed 'Transition dipole matrix elements' to 'Transition dipole moments (TDMs)' throughout the texts.