Bonn 2025 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik

Q 65: Poster – Cold Molecules (joint session MO/Q)

Q 65.15: Poster

Donnerstag, 13. März 2025, 17:00–19:00, Tent

Experiments with continuous sources of AlF molecules — •Priyansh Agarwal¹, Sidney Wright¹, Pulkit Kukreja¹, Eduardo Padilla¹, Maximilian Doppelbauer¹, Russell Thomas¹, Xiangyue Liu¹, Sebastian Kray¹, Jionghao Cai², Boris Sartakov¹, Stefan Truppe², and Gerard Meijer¹ — ¹Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society, Faradayweg 4-6, 14195 Berlin, Germany — ²Imperial College London, Exhibition Rd, South Kensington, London SW7 2AZ

The AlF molecule, subject to laser cooling and trapping efforts, has the advantage that it can be efficiently produced by a thermochemical reaction. Here we present a series of experiments on continuous molecular beam sources of AlF, primarily using the reaction between alumium metal and aluminium trifluoride vapour. We compare a compact AlF molecular beam oven operating near 900 K to a pulsed, laser ablation-based supersonic molecular beam. The continuous, far-field flux from the oven begins to exceed the peak brightness from the supersonic source for the v = 0, J = 7 level, and we show that an excellent signal-to-noise ratio can be obtained for high rotational levels in pulsed laser ionisation experiments. By injecting flux from the oven output into a cryogenic buffer gas cell, we cool the internal temperature to around 30 K and reduce the most probable forward velocity from 700 m/s to 260 m/s using Neon buffer gas. Furthemore, we demonstrate a molecular dispenser source, wherein the molecules thermalise to the laboratory temperature via collisions with vacuum walls of the experiment, generating a room temperature transient molecular vapour.

Keywords: Buffer Gas Source; Aluminium Monoflouride (AlF); Supersonic Molecular Beam; Laser Cooling; Vapour Pressure