No Arabic 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, CH$_3$F, CF$_3$H, and CF$_3$CCH, with input velocities of up to $200,rm{m,s^{-1}}$ to obtain beams with velocities below $15,rm{m,s^{-1}}$ and intensities of several $10^9,rm{mm^{-2},s^{-1}}$. 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.
Recently, a decelerator for neutral polar molecules has been presented that operates on the basis of macroscopic, three-dimensional, traveling electrostatic traps (Osterwalder et al., Phys. Rev. A 81, 051401 (2010)). In the present paper, a complete description of this decelerator is given, with emphasis on the electronics and the mechanical design. Experimental results showing the transverse velocity distributions of guided molecules are shown and compared to trajectory simulations. An assessment of non-adiabatic losses is made by comparing the deceleration signals from 13-CO with those from 12-CO and with simulated signals.
We have designed and implemented a new Stark decelerator based on wire electrodes, which is suitable for ultrahigh vacuum applications. The 100 deceleration stages are fashioned out of 0.6 mm diameter tantalum and the arrays total length is 110 mm, approximately 10 times smaller than a conventional Stark decelerator with the same number of electrode pairs. Using the wire decelerator, we have removed more than 90% of the kinetic energy from metastable CO molecules in a beam.
We present experiments on decelerating and trapping ammonia molecules using a combination of a Stark decelerator and a traveling wave decelerator. In the traveling wave decelerator a moving potential is created by a series of ring-shaped electrodes to which oscillating high voltages are applied. By lowering the frequency of the applied voltages, the molecules confined in the moving trap are decelerated and brought to a standstill. As the molecules are confined in a true 3D well, this new kind of deceleration has practically no losses, resulting in a great improvement on the usual Stark deceleration techniques. The necessary voltages are generated by amplifying the output of an arbitrary wave generator using fast HV-amplifiers, giving us great control over the trapped molecules. We illustrate this by experiments in which we adiabatically cool trapped NH3 and ND3 molecules and resonantly excite their motion.
We here report on the implementation of a microwave lens for neutral polar molecules suitable to focus molecules both in low-field-seeking and in high-field-seeking states. By using the TE_11m modes of a 12 cm long cylindrically symmetric microwave resonator, Stark-decelerated ammonia molecules are transversally confined. We investigate the focusing properties of this microwave lens as a function of the molecules velocity, the detuning of the microwave frequency from the molecular resonance frequency, and the microwave power. Such a microwave lens can be seen as a first important step towards further microwave devices, such as decelerators and traps.
We report on the first experimental demonstration of enantioselective rotational control of chiral molecules with a laser field. In our experiments, two enantiomers of propylene oxide are brought to accelerated unidirectional rotation by means of an optical centrifuge. Using Coulomb explosion imaging, we show that the centrifuged molecules acquire preferential orientation perpendicular to the plane of rotation, and that the direction of this orientation depends on the relative handedness of the enantiomer and the rotating centrifuge field. The observed effect is in agreement with theoretical predictions and is reproduced in numerical simulations of the centrifuge excitation followed by Coulomb explosion of the centrifuged molecules. The demonstrated technique opens new avenues in optical enantioselective control of chiral molecules with a plethora of potential applications in differentiation, separation and purification of chiral mixtures.