Static trapping of polar molecules in a traveling wave decelerator

M. Quintero Perez, P. Jansen, T.E. Wall, J.E. van den Berg, S. Hoekstra, H.L. Bethlem

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

We present experiments on decelerating and trapping ammonia molecules using a combination of a Stark decelerator and a traveling wave decelerator. In the traveling wave decelerator, a moving potential is created by a series of ring-shaped electrodes to which oscillating high voltages (HV) are applied. By lowering the frequency of the applied voltages, the molecules confined in the moving trap are decelerated and brought to a standstill. As the molecules are confined in a true 3D well, this kind of deceleration has practically no losses, resulting in a great improvement on the usual Stark deceleration techniques. The necessary voltages are generated by amplifying the output of an arbitrary wave generator using fast HV amplifiers, giving us great control over the trapped molecules. We illustrate this by experiments in which we adiabatically cool trapped NH
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)133003
JournalPhysical Review Letters
Volume110
Issue number13
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2013

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