A detailed description of a merged beam apparatus for the study of low energy molecular scattering is given. This review is intended to guide any scientist who plans to construct a similar experiment, and to provide some inspiration in describing the approach we chose to our goal. In our experiment a supersonic expansion of paramagnetic particles is merged with one of polar molecules. A magnetic and an electric multipole guide are used to bend the two beams onto the same axis. We here describe in detail how the apparatus is designed, characterised, and operated.Keywords: Cold molecules; Low energy scattering; Molecular beams; Cold chemistry
ReviewIn the last 15 years several methods have been developed to prepare molecular samples at temperatures well below 1 K and to completely control their translational degrees of freedom [1][2][3][4]. A particular area where this is of interest is the study of molecular collisions, and cold chemistry [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. Ultracold molecules, produced by joining two atoms at very low temperature, enabled the investigation of molecular collisions at temperatures as low as 1 μK [12][13][14]. These methods are ideally suited to study alkali dimers, but in order to access broader classes of molecules and a larger range of temperatures a different approach was necessary. The present paper describes such an approach, namely the merging of two molecular beams with controlled velocity.One of the most important developments for reaction dynamics studies in the twentieth century was the crossed-beam technique, for which a Nobel prize was awarded in 1986. In this experiment two molecular beams [15] are crossed to enable a highly detailed investigation of gas-phase molecular scattering, and in particular the measurement of state-to-state differential cross sections [16,17]. The high velocities of supersonic expansions and the crossing angle of usually 90 degrees make the crossed beam technique ideal for studies at high collision energies (E/k B 100 K, where k B is the Boltzmann constant). Lower energies are not accessible without special modifications, thus making the method blind to some of the most fundamental quantum mechanical effects in molecular scattering.The collision energy in a crossed beam experiment depends on the relative velocity of the two reactants. In any molecular collision event the energetics are given only by the motion in the molecular frame of reference (MFR), but not that of the centre of mass (CM). This is illustrated in Fig. 1. Panel A shows the position vectors for reactants 1 and 2