Oriented polar molecules trapped in cold helium nanodroplets: Electrostatic deflection, size separation, and charge migration

Abstract

Helium nanodroplets doped with polar molecules are studied by electrostatic deflection. This broadly applicable method allows even polyatomic molecules to attain sub-Kelvin temperatures and nearly full orientation in the field. The resulting intense force from the field gradient strongly deflects even droplets with tens of thousands of atoms, the most massive neutral systems studied by beam "deflectometry." We use the deflections to extract droplet size distributions. Moreover, since each host droplet deflects according to its mass, spatial filtering of the deflected beam translates into size filtering of neutral fragile nanodroplets. As an example, we measure the dopant ionization probability as a function of droplet radius and determine the mean free path for charge hopping through the helium matrix. The technique will enable separation of doped and neat nanodroplets and size-dependent spectroscopic studies.

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Cited by in corpus (7)

• Strong permanent magnet gradient deflector for Stern-Gerlach-type experiments on molecular beams
• Direct detection of polar structure formation in helium nanodroplets by beam deflection measurements
• Electric deflection of imidazole dimers and trimers in helium nanodroplets: Dipole moments, structure, and fragmentation
• Stern-Gerlach deflection of cryogenically cold polyatomic molecules in superfluid nanodroplets
• Probing the presence and absence of metal-fullerene electron transfer reactions in helium nanodroplets by deflection measurements
• Magnetic deflection of high-spin sodium dimers formed on helium nanodroplets
• Shift of nanodroplet and nanocluster size distributions induced by dopant pick-up statistics