2010/04/30 by Christian Sommer, M. Motsch, Michael Motsch +6 · 27 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Atomic physics #Chemical polarity #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Computational physics #Deuterium #Electric field #Flow velocity #Full width at half maximum #Laser-Matter Interactions and Applications #Materials science #Mechanics #Molecule #Monte Carlo method #Optics #Physics #Quadrupole #Quantum optics and atomic interactions #Range (aeronautics) #Thermal #Thermal velocity #physics.atm-clus #physics.chem-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreva.82.013410
published in Physical Review A 82(1) (American Physical Society) · 8 pages, 6 figures
openalex publication_date 2010/07/16 · arxiv created 2010/07/23 · arxiv updated 2015/03/13 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Electrostatic velocity filtering is a technique for the production of continuous guided beams of slow polar molecules from a thermal gas. We extended this technique to produce pulses of slow molecules with a narrow velocity distribution around a tunable velocity. The pulses are generated by sequentially switching the voltages on adjacent segments of an electric quadrupole guide synchronously with the molecules propagating at the desired velocity. This technique is demonstrated for deuterated ammonia (ND3), delivering pulses with a velocity in the range of 20\ensuremath-100 m/s and a relative velocity spread of (16\ifmmode±\else\textpm\fi2)% at full width at half maximum. At velocities around 60 m/s, the pulses contain up to 106 molecules each. The data are well reproduced by Monte Carlo simulations, which provide useful insight into the mechanisms of velocity selection.