Deceleration of a supersonic beam of SrF molecules to 120 m/s
Atomic Physics
2019-07-17 v1
Abstract
We report on the deceleration of a beam of SrF molecules from 290 to 120~m/s. Following supersonic expansion, the molecules in the (, ) low-field seeking states are trapped by the moving potential wells of a traveling-wave Stark decelerator. With a deceleration strength of 9.6 km/s we have demonstrated the removal of 85 % of the initial kinetic energy in a 4 meter long modular decelerator. The absolute amount of kinetic energy removed is a factor 1.5 higher compared to previous Stark deceleration experiments. The demonstrated decelerator provides a novel tool for the creation of highly collimated and slow beams of heavy diatomic molecules, which serve as a good starting point for high-precision tests of fundamental physics.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1609.09734,
title = {Deceleration of a supersonic beam of SrF molecules to 120 m/s},
author = {S. C. Mathavan and A. Zapara and Q. Esajas and S. Hoekstra},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1609.09734},
year = {2019}
}