Low-energy molecular collisions in a permanent magnetic trap

Abstract

Cold, neutral hydroxyl radicals are Stark decelerated and confined within a magnetic trap consisting of two permanent ring magnets. The OH molecules are trapped in the ro-vibrational ground state at a density of $\sim 10^6$ cm${}^{-3}$ and temperature of 70 mK. Collisions between the trapped OH sample and supersonic beams of atomic He and molecular D${}_2$ are observed and absolute collision cross sections measured. The He--OH and D${}_2$--OH center-of-mass collision energies are tuned from 60 cm${}^{-1}$ to 230 cm${}^{-1}$ and 145 cm${}^{-1}$ to 510 cm${}^{-1}$, respectively, yielding evidence of reduced He--OH inelastic cross sections at energies below 84 cm${}^{-1}$, the OH ground rotational level spacing.

4 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (7)

• A High Phase-Space-Density Gas of Polar Molecules
• Magneto-electrostatic trapping of ground state OH molecules
• Collisional stability of fermionic Feshbach molecules
• Magnetic trapping and Zeeman relaxation of imidogen (NH X-triplet-Sigma)
• Controlling collisions of ultracold atoms with dc electric fields
• Mitigation of loss within a molecular Stark decelerator
• Reflection of OH molecules from magnetic mirrors

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Magneto-Optical Trap for Polar Molecules
• Formation of molecular oxygen in ultracold O + OH reaction