Physical Review A
Controllable electrostatic guiding for cold polar molecules on the surface of a chip
Min Sun, Jianping Yin
Abstract
We propose a scheme to guide and funnel cold polar molecules above the surface of an insulating substrate (i.e., a molecular chip) using an electrostatic field generated by the combination of three parallel charged wires. We calculate the spatial distributions of the electric fields from the above charged-wire layout and their Stark potential for cold CO molecules, and analyze the relationships between the electric field and the geometric parameters of our charged-wire system. Also, we calculate and study the straight and bent guiding efficiency of cold polar molecules (including the guiding efficiency in our molecular funnel) by Monte Carlo simulation. Our study shows that the proposed charged-wire scheme can be used to realize the controllable surface guiding of cold polar molecules in the weak-field-seeking state on a chip, and form various integrated molecular optical elements, even to generate a continous wave cold molecular beam on a chip. In addition, our theoretically calculated results are in good agreement with ones of Monte Carlo simulation, and the guiding efficiency in our molecular funnel can be higher than 90%.