Related papers: Merged-Beams for Slow Molecular Collision Experime…
We present two methods for studying reactive collisions between two atomic or molecular species: a collinear merged-beam method, in which two gas pulses from a single supersonic beam source are coalesced, and an intrabeam-scattering…
Studies of ion-molecule reactions at low temperatures are difficult because stray electric fields in the reaction volume affect the kinetic energy of charged reaction partners. We describe a new experimental approach to study ion-molecule…
Beams of atoms and molecules are stalwart tools for spectroscopy and studies of collisional processes. The supersonic expansion technique can create cold beams of many species of atoms and molecules. However, the resulting beam is typically…
Stark deceleration allows for precise control over the velocity of a pulsed molecular beam and, by the nature of its limited phase-space acceptance, reduces the energy width of the decelerated packet. We describe an alternate method of…
Supersonic beams are a prevalent source of cold molecules utilized in the study of chemical reactions, atom interferometry, gas-surface interactions, precision spectroscopy, molecular cooling and more. The triumph of this method emanates…
We describe a pulsed rotating supersonic beam source, evolved from an ancestral device [M. Gupta and D. Herschbach, J. Phys. Chem. A 105, 1626 (2001)]. The beam emerges from a nozzle near the tip of a hollow rotor which can be spun at…
A recent expansion of cold and ultracold molecule applications has led to renewed focus on molecular species preparation under ultrahigh vacuum conditions. Meanwhile, molecular beams have been used to study gas phase chemical reactions for…
The use of radioactive beams opens a new frontier for fusion studies. The coupling to the continuum can be explored with very loosely bound nuclei. Experiments were performed with beams of nuclei at or near the proton and neutron drip-lines…
In the past two decades, the revolutionary technologies of creating cold and ultracold molecules have provided cutting-edge experiments for studying the fundamental phenomena of collision physics. To a large degree, the recent explosion of…
Binary neutron-star mergers and heavy-ion collisions are related through the properties of the hot and dense nuclear matter formed during these extreme events. In particular, low-energy heavy-ion collisions offer exciting prospects to…
A method for decelerating a continuous beam of neutral polar molecules is theoretically demonstrated. This method utilizes non-uniform, static electric fields and regions of adiabatic population transfer to generate a mechanical force that…
There has been a long-standing quest to observe chemical reactions at low temperatures where reaction rates and pathways are governed by quantum mechanical effects. So far this field of Quantum Chemistry has been dominated by theory. The…
Compound ion distributions, fi(v), have been measured by NASA's Magnetospheric Multi-Scale Mission (MMS) and have been found in reconnection simulations. A complex distribution, fi(v), consisting, for example, of essentially disjoint pieces…
In low-energy collisions between two dipolar molecules, the long-range dipole-dipole interaction plays an important role in the scattering dynamics. Merged beam configurations offer the lowest collision energies achievable, but they…
Using frequency-chirped radiation pressure slowing, we precisely control the velocity of a pulsed CaF molecular beam down to a few m/s, compressing its velocity spread by a factor of 10 while retaining high intensity: at a velocity of…
Slow beams of neutral molecules are of great interest for a wide range of applications, from cold chemistry through precision measurements to tests of the foundations of quantum mechanics. We report on the quantitative observation of…
Employing a two-stage cryogenic buffer gas cell, we produce a cold, hydrodynamically extracted beam of calcium monohydride molecules with a near effusive velocity distribution. Beam dynamics, thermalization and slowing are studied using…
We study collisions between neutral, deuterated ammonia molecules (ND$_3$) stored in a 50 cm diameter synchrotron and argon atoms in co-propagating supersonic beams. The advantages of using a synchrotron in collision studies are twofold:…
A cold electron beam propagating through a background plasma is subject to filamentation process due to theWeibel instability. If the initial beam radius is large compared with the electron skin depth and the beam density is much smaller…
We propose to sympathetically slow and cool polar molecules in a cold, low-density beam using laser-cooled Rydberg atoms. The elastic collision cross sections between molecules and Rydberg atoms are large enough to efficiently thermalize…