Generation of high-energy-resolved NH3 molecular beam by a Stark decelerator with 179 stages

• 来源期刊: 中国物理B（英文版）
• 关键词: Stark deceleration molecular beams cold molecules
• 年，卷（期）: 2019,（5）
• 页码范围: 110-116
• 页数: 7页
• 语种: 英文
• DOI: 10.1088/1674-1056/28/5/053701

摘要

We demonstrate the production of cold, slow NH3 molecules from a supersonic NH3 molecular beam using our electrostatic Stark decelerator consisting of 179 slowing stages. By using this long Stark decelerator, a supersonic NH3 molecular beam can be easily decelerated to trappable velocities. Here we present two modes for operating the Stark de-celerator to slow the supersonic NH3 molecules. The first is the normal mode, where all 179 stages are used to decelerate molecules, and it allows decelerating the NH3 molecular beam from 333 m/s to 18 m/s, with a final temperature of 29.2 mK. The second is the deceleration-bunch mode, which allows us to decelerate the supersonic NH3 beam from 333 m/s to 24 m/s, with a final temperature of 2.9 mK. It is clear that the second mode promises to produce colder (high-energy-resolution) molecular samples than the normal mode. Three-dimensional Monte Carlo simulations are also performed for the experi-ments and they show a good agreement with the observed results. The deceleration-bunch operation mode presented here can find applications in the fields of cold collisions, high-resolution spectroscopy, and precision measurements.