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Register a new userProduction and deceleration of a pulsed beam of metastable NH ($a ^1Delta$) radicals
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Added by
Sebastiaan Y.T. van de Meerakker
Publication date
2005
fields
Physics
and research's language is
English
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We report on the production of a pulsed molecular beam of metastable NH ($a ^1Delta$) radicals and present first results on the Stark deceleration of the NH ($a ^1Delta, J=2, MOmega=-4$) radicals from 550 m/s to 330 m/s. The decelerated molecules are excited on the spin-forbidden $A ^3Pi leftarrow a ^1Delta$ transition, and detected via their subsequent spontaneous fluorescence to the $X ^3Sigma^{-}, v=0$ ground-state. These experiments demonstrate the feasibility of our recently proposed scheme [Phys. Rev. A 64 (2001) 041401] to accumulate ground-state NH radicals in a magnetic trap.
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We report on the Stark deceleration and electrostatic trapping of $^{14}$NH ($a ^1Delta$) radicals. In the trap, the molecules are excited on the spin-forbidden $A ^3Pi leftarrow a ^1Delta$ transition and detected via their subsequent fluorescence to the $X ^3Sigma^-$ ground state. The 1/e trapping time is 1.4 $pm$ 0.1 s, from which a lower limit of 2.7 s for the radiative lifetime of the $a ^1Delta, v=0,J=2$ state is deduced. The spectral profile of the molecules in the trapping field is measured to probe their spatial distribution. Electrostatic trapping of metastable NH followed by optical pumping of the trapped molecules to the electronic ground state is an important step towards accumulation of these radicals in a magnetic trap.
We report on the Stark deceleration of a pulsed molecular beam of NO radicals. Stark deceleration of this chemically important species has long been considered unfeasible due to its small electric dipole moment of 0.16 D. We prepared the NO radicals in the X 2{Pi}3/2, v=0, J=3/2 spin-orbit excited state from the X 2{Pi}1/2, v=0, J=1/2 ground state by Franck-Condon pumping via the A 2{Sigma}+ state. The larger effective dipole moment in the J=3/2 level of the X 2{Pi}3/2, v=0 state, in combination with a 316-stages-long Stark decelerator, allowed us to decelerate NO radicals from 315.0 m/s to 229.2 m/s, thus removing 47 % of their kinetic energy. The measured time-of-flight profiles of the NO radicals exiting the decelerator show good agreement with the outcome of numerical trajectory simulations.
We have used a commercial RF ion-source to extract a beam of metastable neon atoms. The source was easily incorporated into our existing system and was operative within a day of installation. The metastable velocity distribution, flux, flow, and efficiency were investigated for different RF powers and pressures, and an optimum was found at a flux density of $2times10^{12},$atoms/s/sr. To obtain an accurate measurement of the amount of metastable atoms leaving the source, we insert a Faraday cup in the beam line and quench some of them using a weak $633,$nm laser beam. In order to determine how much of the beam was quenched before reaching our detector, we devised a simple model for the quenching transition and investigated it for different laser powers. This detection method can be easily adapted to other noble gas atoms.
We study the dynamics of a supersonic molecular beam in a low-finesse optical cavity and demonstrate that most molecules in the beam can be decelerated to zero central velocity by the intracavity optical field in a process analogous to electrostatic Stark deceleration. We show that the rapid switching of the optical field for slowing the molecules is automatically generated by the cavity-induced dynamics. We further show that $sim1%$ of the molecules can be optically trapped at a few millikelvin in the same cavity.
We investigate the ultracold reaction dynamics of magnetically trapped NH($X ^3Sigma^-$) radicals using rigorous quantum scattering calculations involving three coupled potential energy surfaces. We find that the reactive NH + NH cross section is driven by a short-ranged collisional mechanism, and its magnitude is only weakly dependent on magnetic field strength. Unlike most ultracold reactions observed so far, the NH + NH scattering dynamics is non-universal. Our results indicate that chemical reactions can cause more trap loss than spin-inelastic NH + NH collisions, making molecular evaporative cooling more difficult than previously anticipated.
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