Principles and design of a Zeeman-Sisyphus decelerator for molecular beams

Abstract

We explore a technique for decelerating molecules using a static magnetic field and optical pumping. Molecules travel through a spatially varying magnetic field and are repeatedly pumped into a weak-field seeking state as they move towards each strong field region, and into a strong-field seeking state as they move towards weak field. The method is time-independent and so is suitable for decelerating both pulsed and continuous molecular beams. By using guiding magnets at each weak field region, the beam can be simultaneously guided and decelerated. By tapering the magnetic field strength in the strong field regions, and exploiting the Doppler shift, the velocity distribution can be compressed during deceleration. We develop the principles of this deceleration technique, provide a realistic design, use numerical simulations to evaluate its performance for a beam of CaF, and compare this performance to other deceleration methods.

23 pages

References in corpus (6)

• Magneto-optical trapping of a diatomic molecule
• Using Molecules to Measure Nuclear Spin-Dependent Parity Violation
• Sisyphus Cooling of Electrically Trapped Polyatomic Molecules
• Improved magneto-optical trapping of a diatomic molecule
• Static trapping of polar molecules in a traveling wave decelerator
• Opto-Electrical Cooling of Polar Molecules

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Quantum state manipulation and cooling of ultracold molecules
• Laser cooling of molecules
• Characteristics of a magneto-optical trap of molecules
• Quantum control of molecules for fundamental physics
• Inner-shell excitation in the YbF molecule and its impact on laser cooling
• Multivalent optical cycling centers in polyatomic molecules
• Slow molecular beams from a cryogenic buffer gas source
• Zeeman-Sisyphus Deceleration for Heavy Molecules with Perturbed Excited-State Structure
• Cold CH radicals for laser cooling and trapping