Fig. 4: Momentum distributions of the dissociated tetramers.

a, Azimuthally averaged optical density (OD) of the samples after ramp dissociation and 4.5 ms time of flight. The difference (blue) between images with (orange) and without (green) the removal of tetramers shows the momentum distribution of the tetramer cloud. The error bars represent the standard error of the mean of 60 repetitions. The inset shows the difference image. b, Tetramer dissociation spectrum. We create the tetramers at ξ = 8(1)° and modulate the ellipticity with an amplitude of 1.4° for 2 ms. The solid line is a fit to the dissociation line shape (Methods). The error bars represent the standard error of the mean of ten repetitions. c,d, Time-of-flight images of modulation-dissociated tetramers. We use a modulation frequency of 30 kHz, with an amplitude of 3.6° for 2 ms. Although the microwave ellipticity is about the same in c and d, the field orientation differs by about 90°. The dashed lines mark the extracted long axes of the patterns (Methods). The images are averaged over 84 and 40 measurements for c and d, respectively. Each pixel is a binning of 5 × 5 pixels from the raw images. e, Theoretical tetramer wavefunction in momentum space. The microwave field propagates along the z-axis, and its long axis is oriented along the x-axis. The cut-open surfaces correspond to a probability density of \(1.5\times 1{0}^{8}{a}_{0}^{3}\) (orange), \(3.5\times 1{0}^{8}{a}_{0}^{3}\) (blue) and \(6\times 1{0}^{8}{a}_{0}^{3}\) (green), respectively. f, The theoretical wavefunction of the dissociated tetramers in momentum space, integrated along the propagation axis of the microwave field. The imaging plane (a,c,d) is roughly perpendicular to the z-axis. Scale bars, 50 μm (a) and 100 μm (c,d).