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MO: Molekülphysik

MO 57: Poster: Cold Molecules

MO 57.11: Poster

Thursday, March 16, 2006, 16:30–18:30, Labsaal

Cryogenic source for cold polar molecules — •Laurens D. van Buuren, Pepijn W.H. Pinkse, and Gerhard Rempe — Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik, Hans-Kopfermann-Str. 1, 85748 Garching, Germany

Presently, there is a wide interest in cold polar molecules [1]. Dense samples of these molecules allow the study of collisions and chemistry at low temperatures. Such studies are useful in itself, but will also give insight into the possibility of evaporative cooling of these samples. This could lead to a regime where the anistropic dipole-dipole interaction becomes relatively strong and new phenomena are to be expected. Besides this, cold polar molecules can be employed in high precision measurements and are candidates for implementation of a quantum computation.

In our group, translational cold molecules (T ∼ 1 K) are filtered out of an effusive molecular beam (T ∼ 160 K for ammonia) using an electrical guide. The guided molecules have been stored in a trap for 130 ms at a density of 10⁸ cm⁻³ [2]. These molecules occupy many internal (ro-vibrational) states. Our first goal is to increase the density of translational and internally cold molecules by pre-cooling them in a cryogenic helium buffer gas. First measurements of buffer-gas cooled beams show the potential of this technique [3]. Here, the proposed cryogenic source to load cold polar molecules into the electric guide will be presented.

[1] J. Doyle et al., Eur. Phys. J. D 31, 149-164 (2004).

[2] T. Rieger et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 173002 (2005).

[3] S. Maxwell et al., arXiv/physics 0508100 (2005).