https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2008-00001-y
Cold SO2 molecules by Stark deceleration
1
Institut für Quantenoptik, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Welfengarten 1, 30167 Hannover, Germany
2
Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Faradayweg 4–6, 14195 Berlin, Germany
Corresponding author: a lisdat@iqo.uni-hannover.de
Received:
25
September
2007
Revised:
30
November
2007
Published online:
4
January
2008
We produce SO2 molecules with a centre of mass velocity near zero using a Stark decelerator. Since the initial kinetic energy of the supersonic SO2 molecular beam is high, and the removed kinetic energy per stage is small, 326 deceleration stages are necessary to bring SO2 to a complete standstill, significantly more than in other experiments. We show that in such a decelerator possible loss due to coupling between the motional degrees of freedom must be considered. Experimental results are compared with 3D Monte-Carlo simulations and the quantum state selectivity of the Stark decelerator is demonstrated.
PACS: 33.80.Ps – Optical cooling of molecules; trapping / 33.55.Be – Zeeman and Stark effects / 39.10.+j – Atomic and molecular beam sources and techniques
© EDP Sciences, Società Italiana di Fisica, Springer-Verlag, 2008
