Berlin 2005 – wissenschaftliches Programm
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MO: Molekülphysik
MO 21: Heteronuclear Cold Molecules
MO 21.1: Vortrag
Samstag, 5. März 2005, 08:30–08:45, HU 2091
Deceleration and trapping of OH radicals — •Nicolas Vanhaecke1, SebastiaanY.T. van de Meerakker2,1, and Gerard Meijer2,1 — 1Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Faradayweg 4-6, 14195 Berlin, Germany — 2FOM-Institute for Plasmaphysics ’Rijnhuizen’, Edisonbaan 14, 3439 MN Nieuwegein, the Netherlands
Over the last years our group has been developing methods to get improved control over the absolute velocity and over the velocity spread of molecules in a molecular beam. These methods rely on the, quantum state specific, force that polar molecules experience in inhomogeneous electric fields. This force is rather weak, but nevertheless suffices to achieve complete control over the molecular motion, and polar molecules in a supersonic beam can be brought to rest and confined in an electrostatic trap.
Here, we report on the deceleration and electrostatic trapping of ground state OH radicals. The experiments are performed in a new generation molecular beam deceleration machine, designed such that a large fraction of the molecular beam pulse can be slowed down and trapped. Depending on details of the trap loading sequence, typically 105 OH (X 2Π3/2, J=3/2) radicals are trapped at a density of 107 cm−3 and at a temperature in the 50-500 mK range. In our deceleration experiments, state-selective molecular beams with a computer-controlled velocity distribution are produced, offering the unique possibility to perform collision and reactive scattering experiments as a function of the continuously tunable collision energy and with unprecedented energy resolution.