Magnetic Trapping of Cold Methyl Radicals
Abstract
We have demonstrated that a supersonic beam of methyl radicals (CH) in the ground rotational state of both and species has been slowed down to standstill with a magnetic molecular decelerator, and successfully captured spatially in an anti-Helmholtz magnetic trap for 1 s. The trapped CH radicals have a mean translational temperature of about 200 mK with an estimated density of cm. The methyl radical is an ideal system for the study of cold molecules not only because of its high reactivities at low temperatures, but also because further cooling below 1 mK is plausible via sympathetic cooling with ultracold atoms. The demonstrated trapping capability of methyl radicals opens up various possibilities for realizing ultracold ensembles of molecules towards Bose-Einstein condensation of polyatomic molecules and investigations of reactions governed by quantum statistics.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1609.07735,
title = {Magnetic Trapping of Cold Methyl Radicals},
author = {Yang Liu and Manish Vashishta and Pavle Djuricanin and Sida Zhou and Wei Zhong and Tony Mittertreiner and David Carty and Takamasa Momose},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1609.07735},
year = {2017}
}