Hannover 2010 – scientific programme

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MO: Fachverband Molekülphysik

MO 28: Poster: Cold Molecules

MO 28.6: Poster

Thursday, March 11, 2010, 16:00–18:30, Lichthof

Stark decelerated SO₂ for dissociation and collision studies — •Oleg Bucicov¹, Eberhard Tiemann¹, and Christian Lisdat² — ¹Institut für Quantenoptik, Leibniz Universität Hannover — ²Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt, Braunschweig

We present a Stark decelerator for low-field-seeking states with 326 stages, with which we succeeded in decelerating SO₂ molecules to the velocity of about 50 m/s [1]. With this decelerator it should be possible to bring the relatively heavy SO₂ molecules to a standstill and to trap them electrostatically.

The preliminary experiments with Xe atom ionization and detection and the two-photon dissociation of SO₂ molecules with subsequent single photon ionization of the electronically excited SO photofragment have demostrated that our developed data acquisition system is capable of detection down to the limit of single ions.

The predissociation at the threshold of cold decelerated SO₂ molecules, prepared in the first state selective excitation step using a frequency-doubled dye laser, would result in the production of cold fragments: O in its ground state and SO in few rotational levels of selected vibrational states in the lowest electronic state [2]. The detection of the molecular fragment SO by means of the (1+1) REMPI technique using a second frequency-doubled dye laser would enable measuring the velocity distribution of the both photofragments SO and O.

[1] O. Bucicov, Eur. Phys. J. D 46 463 (2008).

[2] S. Jung, J. Phys. B 39 S1085 (2006).