No Arabic abstract
This work presents an experimental protocol conceived to determine the vibrational distribution of barium monofluoride molecules seeded in a supersonic beam of argon. Here, as in many cases, the detection signal is related to the number of molecules by an efficiency involving several parameters that may be difficult to determine properly. In particular, this efficiency depends on the vibrational level of the detected molecules. Our approach avoids these complications by comparing different detection signals generated by different vibrational excitations. Such an excitation is made possible by the use of a broadband optical source that depletes a specific vibrational level whose population is redistributed in the other levels.
We demonstrate the conversion of cold Cs_{2} molecules initially distributed over several vibrational levels of the lowest triplet state a^{3}Sigma_{u}^{+} into the singlet ground state X^{1}Sigma_{g}^{+}. This conversion is realized by a broadband laser exciting the molecules to a well-chosen state from which they may decay to the singlet state througtextcolor{black}{h two sequential single-photon emission steps: Th}e first photon populates levels with mixed triplet-singlet character, making possible a second spontaneous emission down to several vibrational levels of the X^{1}Sigma_{g}^{+} states. By adding an optical scheme for vibrational cooling, a substantial fraction of molecules are transferred to the ground vibrational level of the singlet state. The efficiency of the conversion process, with and without vibrational cooling, is discussed at the end of the article. The presented conversion is general in scope and could be extended to other molecules.
In this work, we demonstrate the use of a Rydberg atom-based sensor for determining the angle-of-arrival of an incident radio-frequency (RF) wave or signal. The technique uses electromagnetically induced transparency in Rydberg atomic vapor in conjunction with a heterodyne Rydberg atom-based mixer. The Rydberg atom mixer measures the phase of the incident RF wave at two different locations inside an atomic vapor cell. The phase difference at these two locations is related to the direction of arrival of the incident RF wave. To demonstrate this approach, we measure phase differences of an incident 19.18 GHz wave at two locations inside a vapor cell filled with cesium atoms for various incident angles. Comparisons of these measurements to both full-wave simulation and to a plane-wave theoretical model show that these atom-based sub-wavelength phase measurements can be used to determine the angle-of-arrival of an RF field.
The vibrational quenching cross sections and corresponding low-temperature rate constants for the v = 1 and v = 2 states of CN- colliding with He and Ar atoms have been computed ab initio using new three dimensional potential energy surfaces. Little work has so far been carried out on low-energy vibrationally inelastic collisions for anions with neutral atoms. The cross sections and rates calculated at energies and temperatures relevant for both ion traps and astrochemical modelling, are found by the present calculations to be even smaller than those of the similar C2- /He and C2-/Ar systems which are in turn of the order of those existing for the collisions involving neutral diatom-atom systems. The implications of our finding in the present case rather small computed rate constants are discussed for their possible role in the dynamics of molecular cooling and in the evolution of astrochemical modelling networks.
We present a brief review of our progress towards measuring parity violation in heavy-metal chiral complexes using mid-infrared Ramsey interferometry. We discuss our progress addressing the main challenges, including the development of buffer-gas sources of slow, cold polyatomic molecules, and the frequency-stabilisation of quantum cascade lasers calibrated using primary frequency standards. We report investigations on achiral test species of which promising chiral derivatives have been synthesized.
We present an experimental realization of a moving magnetic trap decelerator, where paramagnetic particles entrained in a cold supersonic beam are decelerated in a co-moving magnetic trap. Our method allows for an efficient slowing of both paramagnetic atoms and molecules to near stopping velocities. We show that under realistic conditions we will be able to trap and decelerate a large fraction of the initial supersonic beam. We present our first results on deceleration in a moving magnetic trap by bringing metastable neon atoms to near rest. Our estimated phase space volume occupied by decelerated particles at final velocity of 50 m/s shows an improvement of two orders of magnitude as compared to currently available deceleration techniques.