Electric field effects on the photo associative formation of cold polar molecules

Kyle Taylor, M. D. Stephens, Karen Chamberlin +3 more

B. Laburthe-Tolra, Cyril Drag, Salah Boussen +8 more

M. Motsch, Christian Sommer, Martin Zeppenfeld +3 more

High fluxes of cold polar molecules are efficiently produced by electric guiding and velocity filtering. Here, we investigate different aspects of the beam formation. Variations of the source parameters such as density and temperature result in characteristic changes in the guided beam. These are observed in the velocity distribution of the guided molecules as well as in the dependence of the signal of guided molecules on the trapping electric field. A model taking into account velocity-dependent collisional losses of cold molecules in the region close to the nozzle accurately reproduces this behaviour. This clarifies an open question on the parameter dependence of the detected signal and gives a more detailed understanding of the velocity-filtering and guiding process.

Marko Gacesa, Jason N. Byrd, Jonathan Smucker +2 more

The authors align a pair of ultracold polar molecules using an external electric field and use a laser to excite one of them and photo-associate the pair, binding them into an ultracold polyatomic molecule.

Sergey Alyabyshev, Mikhail Lemeshko, Roman V. Krems

Lianzhong Deng, Yong Xia, Yin Jian-Ping

This paper proposes a scheme to guide cold polar molecules by using a single charged wire half embanked in an insulating substrate and a homogeneous bias electric field, which is generated by a plate capacitor composed of two infinite parallel metal plates. The spatial distributions of the electrostatic field produced by the combination of the charged wire and the plate capacitor and the corresponding Stark potentials (including dipole forces) for metastable CO molecules are calculated, the relationships between the electric field and the parameters of our charged-wire layout are analysed. It also studies the influences of the insulator on the electric field distribution and the discharge effect. This study shows that the proposed scheme can be used to guide cold polar molecules in the weak-field – seeking states, and to form various molecule-optical elements, such as molecular funnel, molecular beam-splitters and molecule interferometer, even to construct a variety of integrated molecule-optical elements and their molecule chips.