In situ characterization of a cold and short pulsed molecular beam by femtosecond ion imaging

In this paper we report on the in situ characterization of the cold velocity distribution of a pulsed molecular beam produced by a novel cantilever piezo valve. The velocity distribution is measured at various temporal positions within the pulsed expansion using femtosecond velocity map ion imaging. It is shown that the universal detection of molecules by multi-photon femtosecond velocity map ion imaging can provide directly the velocity distribution with excellent velocity resolution. The novel cantilever piezo valve can operate both in continuous (DC) and pulsed mode without any modification using the same drive electronics. Pulsed operation was tested at repetition rates of 20 Hz, 1 kHz and 5 kHz and a conical nozzle 200 μm in diameter. The cantilever valve produces a pulsed molecular beam of translationally cold molecules at modest backing pressures of about 6 bar. At low to medium repetition rates (20-1000 Hz) the pulsed piezo valve produces pulses of 12-40 μs duration of translationally cold seeded beams of helium and neon with speed ratios up to S = 135 (20 Hz, 0.1% CD