Heidelberg 2015 – scientific programme
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MO: Fachverband Molekülphysik
MO 4: Cold Molecules 1
MO 4.1: Talk
Monday, March 23, 2015, 14:30–14:45, PH/SR106
Trapping of polar molecules in a segmented electrostatic quadrupole guide — •Thomas Gantner, Jannik Luhn, Xing Wu, Sotir Chervenkov, Martin Zeppenfeld, and Gerhard Rempe — Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik, 85748 Garching, Germany
We present a simple and robust method for trapping of neutral polar polyatomic molecules in an electrostatic quadrupole guide. A beam of polar molecules from a liquid-nitrogen-cooled nozzle is injected into an electrostatic quadrupole guide [1] consisting of four consecutive segments. One of those segments is used as a trap and thus intrinsically provides a two-dimensional transverse confinement for the molecules. To capture the molecules in the third dimension, along the guide, the segments before and after the trap are switched in a way to provide electrostatic potential barriers in the longitudinal direction. Thereby, we have achieved trapping of CH3F molecules with a trap lifetime of about 170 ms. By implementing a more advanced guide switching scheme, we expect to boost the absolute number of trapped molecules as well as the trapping lifetime. As electrostatic guiding is well-established for various polar polyatomic molecules [2], the trap-in-guide technique is easily applicable to other species, providing a means to study electrically guided molecules, e.g., probing them spectroscopically.
References
[1]S.A. Rangwala et al., Phys. Rev. A 67, 043406 (2003)
[2]C. Sommer et al., Phys. Rev. A 82, 013410 (2010)