Continuous Centrifuge Decelerator for Polar Molecules

Abstract

Producing large samples of slow molecules from thermal-velocity ensembles is a formidable challenge. Here we employ a centrifugal force to produce a continuous molecular beam with a high flux at near-zero velocities. We demonstrate deceleration of three electrically guided molecular species, CH3F, CF3H, and CF3CCH, with input velocities of up to 200 m s(-1) to obtain beams with velocities below 15 m s(-1) and intensities of several 10(9) mm(-2) s(-1). The centrifuge decelerator is easy to operate and can, in principle, slow down any guidable particle. It has the potential to become a standard technique for continuous deceleration of molecules.

Thermometry of Guided Molecular Beams from a Cryogenic Buffer‐Gas Cell

“…Cold molecules are also beneficial for precision spectroscopy, serving as an important tool for exploring fundamental physics [13,14,15]. For various applications of cold polar molecules, achieving high purity of and control over their internal states [16,17,18], in addition to having the ability to manipulate their motional behaviour [19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27], is of paramount importance. In pursuit of this goal, cryogenic buffer-gas cooling has proven to be a very general and powerful method to produce internally and translationally cold molecules [28,29,30].…”

Magnetic Trapping of Molecules via Optical Loading and Magnetic Slowing

“…Among the various cooling methods, cold beam techniques provide the most diverse sources of cold (around 1 K), neutral molecules [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22]. Trapping of molecules from these sources would allow for longer interaction times and detailed study of collisions.…”

Measuring and manipulating the temperature of cold molecules trapped on a chip

“…The realization of such molecular ensembles has seen great progress via the binding of ultracold atoms, through which, for example, rovibronic ground-state molecules have been realized [2] and quantum-state-specific chemical reactions have been observed and controlled [3]. On the other hand, molecular-beam experiments have demonstrated significant progress in the capture and control of cold samples of molecules that cannot be assembled from laser-cooled atoms, for example, O 2 [4], OH [5], and ND 3 [6], as well as CH 3 F, CF 3 H, and CF 3 CCH [7]. Experiments have also now demonstrated the direct laser cooling of molecules [8,9] and a three-dimensional magneto-optical trap [10].…”