Probing ultracold chemistry using ion spectrometry

Abstract

Rapid progress in atomic, molecular, and optical (AMO) physics techniques enabled the creation of ultracold samples of molecular species and opened opportunities to explore chemistry in the ultralow temperature regime. In particular, both the external and internal quantum degrees of freedom of the reactant atoms and molecules are controlled, allowing studies that explored the role of the long range potential in ultracold reactions. The kinetics of these reactions have typically been determined using the loss of reactants as proxies. To extend such studies into the short-range, we developed an experimental apparatus that combines the production of quantum-state-selected ultracold KRb molecules with ion mass and kinetic energy spectrometry, and directly observed KRb + KRb reaction intermediates and products [Science, 2019, 366, 1111]. Here, we present the apparatus in detail. For future studies that aim for detecting the quantum states of the reaction products, we demonstrate a photodissociation based scheme to calibrate the ion kinetic energy spectrometer at low energies.

arXiv comment10 pages, 9 figures

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Cited by in corpus (10)

• Bimolecular chemistry in the ultracold regime
• Precision test of statistical dynamics with state-to-state ultracold chemistry
• State-to-state control of ultracold molecular reactions
• Ultracold Sticky Collisions: Theoretical and Experimental Status
• Steering ultracold reactions through long-lived transient intermediates
• Hyperfine-to-rotational energy transfer in ultracold atom-molecule collisions
• Radiative Decay Rate and Branching Fractions of MgF
• Energy-scaling of the product state distribution for three-body recombination of ultracold atoms
• Features of Molecular Structure Beneficial for Optical Pumping
• A model for nuclear spin product-state distributions of ultracold chemical reactions in magnetic fields