Quantum-state selection, alignment, and orientation of large molecules using static electric and laser fields

Abstract

Supersonic beams of polar molecules are deflected using inhomogeneous electric fields. The quantum-state selectivity of the deflection is used to spatially separate molecules according to their quantum state. A detailed analysis of the deflection and the obtained quantum-state selection is presented. The rotational temperatures of the molecular beams are determined from the spatial beam profiles and are all approximately 1 K. Unprecedented degrees of laser-induced alignment $(<{\cos }^2{\theta }_{2D}>=0.972)$ and orientation of iodobenzene molecules are demonstrated when the state-selected samples are used. Such state-selected and oriented molecules provide unique possibilities for many novel experiments in chemistry and physics.

minor changes, references updated

References in corpus (9)

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