Water vapor at a translational temperature of one kelvin

Abstract

We report the creation of a confined slow beam of heavy-water (D2O) molecules with a translational temperature around 1 kelvin. This is achieved by filtering slow D2O from a thermal ensemble with inhomogeneous static electric fields exploiting the quadratic Stark shift of D2O. All previous demonstrations of electric field manipulation of cold dipolar molecules rely on a predominantly linear Stark shift. Further, on the basis of elementary molecular properties and our filtering technique we argue that our D2O beam contains molecules in only a few ro-vibrational states.

4 pages, 4 figures, 1 table

References in corpus (8)

• Optical Production of Ultracold Polar Molecules
• Quo vadis, cold molecules? - Editorial review
• A continuous source of translationally cold dipolar molecules
• Slowing heavy, ground-state molecules using an alternating gradient decelerator
• Phase Space Manipulation of Cold Free Radical OH Molecules
• Continuous loading of an electrostatic trap for polar molecules
• Inelastic Collisions of Ultracold Polar Molecules
• The Abundance and Emission of H2O and O2 in Clumpy Molecular Clouds

Cited by in corpus (8)

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• Internal-state thermometry by depletion spectroscopy in a cold guided beam of formaldehyde
• Trapping of Neutral Rubidium with a Macroscopic Three-Phase Electric Trap
• Collisional effects in the formation of cold guided beams of polar molecules
• Adiabatic orientation of rotating dipole molecules in an external field