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Frontiers of Physics

A versatile electrostatic trap with open optical access

Shengqiang Li, Jianping Yin

Published Oct 24, 2017• 4 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A versatile electrostatic trap with open optical access for cold polar molecules in weak-field-seeking state is proposed in this paper. The trap is composed of a pair of disk electrodes and a hexapole. With the help of a finite element software, the spatial distribution of the electrostatic field is calculated. The results indicate that a three-dimensional closed electrostatic trap is formed. Taking ND 3 molecules as an example, the dynamic process of loading and trapping is simulated. The results show that when the velocity of the molecular beam is 10 m/s and the loading time is 0.9964 ms, the maximum loading efficiency reaches 94.25% and the temperature of the trapped molecules reaches about 30.3 mK. A single well can be split into two wells, which is of significant importance to the precision measurement and interference of matter waves. This scheme, in addition, can be further miniaturized to construct one-dimensional, two-dimensional, and three-dimensional spatial electrostatic lattices.

DOI
10.1007/s11467-017-0727-1

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A versatile electrostatic trap with open optical access for cold polar molecules in weak-field-seeking state is proposed in this paper. The trap is composed of a pair of disk electrodes and a hexapole. With the help of a finite element software, the spatial distribution of the electrostatic field is calculated. The results indicate that a three-dimensional closed electrostatic trap is formed. Taking ND 3 molecules as an example, the dynamic process of loading and trapping is simulated. The results show that when the velocity of the molecular beam is 10 m/s and the loading time is 0.9964 ms, the maximum loading efficiency reaches 94.25% and the temperature of the trapped molecules reaches about 30.3 mK. A single well can be split into two wells, which is of significant importance to the precision measurement and interference of matter waves. This scheme, in addition, can be further miniaturized to construct one-dimensional, two-dimensional, and three-dimensional spatial electrostatic lattices.
We propose an optically accessible electrostatic trap scheme to confine cold polar molecules by using two charged spherical electrodes, and we calculate the corresponding electric field distribution and the Stark trapping potential for ND3 molecules. We also propose a desirable scheme to realize an efficient loading of cold polar molecules in weak-field-seeking states, and our simulated results show that the maximal loading efficiency can reach ∼14%. In addition, we briefly discuss some potential applications of our proposed trap scheme in the studies of optical-potential evaporative cooling and electrostatic surface traps for cold polar molecules.
We propose a novel optical-access opened electrostatic trap to study the Stark-potential evaporative cooling of polar molecules by using two charged disk electrodes with a central hole of radius r 0 =1.5 mm, and derive a set of new analytical equations to calculate the spatial distributions of the electrostatic field in the above charged-disk layout. Afterwards, we calculate the electric-field distributions of our electrostatic trap and the Stark potential for cold ND 3 molecules, and analyze the dependences of both the electric field and the Stark potential on the geometric parameters of our charged-disk scheme, and find an optimal condition to form a desirable trap with the same trap depth in the x , y , and z directions. Also, we propose a desirable scheme to realize an efficient loading of cold polar molecules in the weak-field-seeking states, and investigate the dependences of the loading efficiency on both the initial forward velocity of the incident molecular beam and the loading time by Monte Carlo simulations. Our study shows that the maximal loading efficiency of our trap scheme can reach about 95%, and the corresponding temperature of the trapped cold molecules is about 28.8 mK. Finally, we study the Stark-potential evaporative cooling for cold polar molecules in our trap by the Monte Carlo method, and find that our simulated evaporative cooling results are consistent with our developed analytical model based on trapping-potential evaporative cooling.
We propose a versatile electrostatic trap scheme using several charged spherical electrodes and a bias electric field. We first give the two-ball scheme and derive the analytical solution of the electric field. In order to make a comparison, we also give the numerical solution calculated by the finite element software (Ansoft Maxwell). Considering the loading of cold polar molecules into the trap, we give the three-ball scheme. We first give the analytical and numerical solutions of the distribution of the electric field. Then we simulate the dynamic process of the loading and trapping cold molecules using the classical Monte Carlo method. We analyze the influence of the velocity of the incident molecular beam and the loading time on the loading efficiency. After that, we give the temperature of the trapped cold molecules. Our study shows that the loading efficiency can reach 82%, and the corresponding temperature of the trapped molecules is about 24.6 mK. At last, we show that the single well divides into two ones by increasing the bias electric field or decreasing the voltages applied to the spherical electrodes.
In order to meet the demands for laser manipulations and detection of cold molecules, we propose an optically accessible and controllable electrostatic surface storage ring for cold polar molecules on a chip, which is one based on extension and application of the three-wire surface guiding scheme [J. Opt. Soc. Am. B25, 1214 (2008)]. To our knowledge, this is the first real surface storage ring scheme. The spatial distribution of the electrostatic fields generated by two insulator-embedded charged rings and a grounded conductor plate is numerically calculated. Relationships between the height of the trap center above the surface and the setup parameters are analyzed in detail. Using OH radical molecules as a tester, the range of molecular velocities that the storage ring can confine is investigated. The dynamical process of weak-field-seeking OH molecules of state |J,KM〉=|3/2,−9/4〉 being loaded into and confined in the storage ring is studied using Monte Carlo simulations. Dependencies of translational temperature of molecules and their trapping efficiency in the storage ring on parameters of the setup and the initial molecular beam are examined. By incorporating a bunching function into our scheme, the number of round trips a trapped molecular packet makes can be improved by almost three times before getting spread out to fill the whole storage ring, as confirmed by numerical simulations.
We propose a novel controllable electrostatic double-well trap scheme by using two charged ring wires and two parallel transparent electrodes. The spatial distributions of the electrostatic field from the above charged wires and the charged plates are calculated. We also analyze the advantages of the proposed scheme, and discuss the loading process of cold molecules from a cold molecular beam into our trap. Our study shows that our controllable double-well trap is not only convenient to trap, manipulate and control cold polar molecules in the weak-field-seeking states, but also has the potential applications in molecule optics field，such as molecular interference, molecular entanglement, and molecular collisions, even to study the molecular BEC in the double-well trap, and so on.
We propose a novel scheme in which cold polar molecules are trapped by an electrostatic field generated by the combination of a pair of parallel transparent electrodes (i.e., two infinite transparent plates) and a ring electrode (i.e., a ring wire). The spatial distributions of the electrostatic fields from the above charged wire and the charged plates and the corresponding Stark potentials for cold CO molecules are calculated; the dependences of the trap centre position on the geometric parameters of the electrode are analysed. We also discuss the loading process of cold molecules from a cold molecular beam into our trap. This study shows that the proposed scheme is not only simple and convenient to trap, manipulate and control cold polar molecules in weak-field-seeking states, but also provides an opportunity to study cold collisions and collective quantum effects in a variety of cold molecular systems, etc.