Production and deceleration of a pulsed beam of metastable NH ($a^1\Delta$) radicals

Abstract

We report on the production of a pulsed molecular beam of metastable NH ($a^1\Delta$) radicals and present first results on the Stark deceleration of the NH ($a^1\Delta ,J=2,M\Omega =-4$) radicals from 550 m/s to 330 m/s. The decelerated molecules are excited on the spin-forbidden $A^3\Pi \leftarrow a^1\Delta$ transition, and detected via their subsequent spontaneous fluorescence to the $X^3{\Sigma }^{-},v"=0$ ground-state. These experiments demonstrate the feasibility of our recently proposed scheme [Phys. Rev. A 64 (2001) 041401] to accumulate ground-state NH radicals in a magnetic trap.

11 pages, 4 figures, v2: fixed author name for web-abstract, no changes to manuscript