Related papers: Molecular beam brightening by shock-wave suppressi…
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…
Radiative shocks (also called supercritical shocks) are high Mach number shock waves that photoionize the medium ahead of the shock front and give rise to a radiative precursor. They are generated in the laboratory using high-energy or…
Cold atomic gases provide a remarkable testbed to study the physics of interacting many-body quantum systems. They have started to play a major role as quantum simulators, given the high degree of control that is possible. A crucial element…
We propose a new class of bosonic dark matter (DM) detectors based on resonant absorption onto a gas of small polyatomic molecules. Bosonic DM acts on the molecules as a narrow-band perturbation, like an intense but weakly coupled laser.…
Magnetized oblique shocks are of interest in various plasmas, including in astrophysical systems, magneto-inertial confinement fusion experiments, and in aerospace applications. Through experiments on the COBRA pulsed power facility…
Molecular cooling is essential for studying the formation of sub-structure of dissipative dark-matter halos that may host compact objects such as black holes. Here, we analyze the reaction rates relevant for the formation, dissociation, and…
In low energy atom-surface scattering, it is possible for the atom to be reflected in a region of attractive potential with no classical turning point. This phenomenon has come to be known as quantum reflection and it can reduce the…
We demonstrate laser cooling of barium monofluoride (138BaF) molecules. We use serrodynes to synthesize time-sequenced optical spectra that can be precisely tailored to the hyperfine structure of this heaviest non-radioactive alkaline earth…
Magnetic reconnection, a fundamental plasma process associated with a rapid dissipation of magnetic energy, is believed to power many disruptive phenomena in laboratory plasma devices, the Earth magnetosphere, and the solar corona.…
We report the slowing of a supersonic beam by elastic reflection from a receding atomic mirror. We use a pulsed supersonic nozzle to generate a 511 +/- 9 m/s beam of helium that we slow by reflection from a Si(111)-H(1x1) crystal placed on…
It is a common point that "soft" condensed matter (like granular materials or foams) can reduce damage caused by impact or explosion. It is attributed to their ability to absorb significant energy. This is certainly the case for a…
We demonstrate and characterize a cryogenic buffer gas-cooled molecular beam source capable of producing bright beams of free radicals and refractory species. Details of the beam properties (brightness, forward velocity distribution,…
We develop double microwave shielding, which has recently enabled evaporative cooling to the first Bose-Einstein condensate of polar molecules [Bigagli et al., Nature 631, 289 (2024)]. Two microwave fields of different frequency and…
Mass spectrometry is used in a wide range of scientific disciplines including proteomics, pharmaceutics, forensics, and fundamental physics and chemistry. Given this ubiquity, there is a worldwide effort to improve the efficiency and…
We show that thin dielectric films can be used to enhance the performance of passive atomic mirrors by enabling quantum reflection probabilities of over 90% for atoms incident at velocities ~1 mm/s, achieved in recent experiments. This…
A recent progress on laser cooling of molecules is summarized. Since the development during 1980s for atomic species, laser cooling has been the very beginning step to cool and trap atoms for frontier research on quantum simulations,…
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 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…
Molecular beam experiments that use low-temperature bolometers as (energy-) detectors are well suited to the study of physisorption and recombination of hydrogen on low-temperature surfaces. Experiments where this technique is combined with…
Sonoluminescence is the intriguing phenomenon of strong light flashes from tiny bubbles in a liquid. The bubbles are driven by an ultrasonic wave and need to be filled with noble gas atoms. Approximating the emitted light by blackbody…