Multistage optical Stark decelerator for a pulsed supersonic beam with a quasi-cw optical lattice
Yaling Yin, Qi Zhou, Lianzhong Deng +2 more
We propose a new scheme to realize a multistage optical Stark deceleration for a supersonic molecular beam using a time-varying red-detuned quasi-cw optical lattice with a length of up to 10 mm. We analyze the motion of the slowed molecules inside the optical decelerator, and study the dependences of the velocity of the slowed molecular packet on the synchronous phase angle and the number of the deceleration stages (i.e., the number of the optical-lattice cells) by using Monte-Carlo method. Our study shows that the proposed optical Stark decelerator cannot only efficiently slow a pulsed supersonic beam from 230 m/s to zero (standstill), but also obtain an ultracold molecular packet with a temperature of sub-mK due to bunching effect in the multistage optical Stark decelerator, which can be trapped in the optical lattice by rapidly turning off the modulation signal of the lattice. Also, we compare the decelerated results of our multistage optical Stark decelerator with a single-stage optical one, and find that our scheme cannot only obtain a colder molecular packet under the same molecular-beam parameters and deceleration conditions, but also be directly used to trap the slowed cold molecules after the deceleration, while don't need to use another molecular trap.
Optics Express•Jun 11, 2009•19 citations