English

Deceleration and trapping of heavy diatomic molecules using a ring-decelerator

Atomic Physics 2015-03-19 v2

Abstract

We present an analysis of the deceleration and trapping of heavy diatomic molecules in low-field seeking states by a moving electric potential. This moving potential is created by a 'ring-decelerator', which consists of a series of ring-shaped electrodes to which oscillating high voltages are applied. Particle trajectory simulations have been used to analyze the deceleration and trapping efficiency for a group of molecules that is of special interest for precision measurements of fundamental discrete symmetries. For the typical case of the SrF molecule in the (N,M) = (2, 0) state, the ring-decelerator is shown to outperform traditional and alternate-gradient Stark decelerators by at least an order of magnitude. If further cooled by a stage of laser cooling, the decelerated molecules allow for a sensitivity gain in a parity violation measurement, compared to a cryogenic molecular beam experiment, of almost two orders of magnitude.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1104.4328,
  title  = {Deceleration and trapping of heavy diatomic molecules using a ring-decelerator},
  author = {Joost E. van den Berg and Samuel Hoekman Turkesteen and Eric B. Prinsen and Steven Hoekstra},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1104.4328},
  year   = {2015}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-21T17:57:30.678Z