A supersonic beam of cold lithium hydride molecules

Abstract

We have developed a source of cold LiH molecules for Stark deceleration and trapping experiments. Lithium metal is ablated from a solid target into a supersonically expanding carrier gas. The translational, rotational and vibrational temperatures are 0.9(0.1) K, 5.9(0.5) K and 468(17) K respectively. Although they have not reached thermal equilibrium with the carrier gas, we estimate that 90% of the LiH molecules are in the ground state, X^{1} Σ^{+} (v=0, J=0). With a single 7 ns ablation pulse, the number of molecules in the ground state is 4.5(1.8)*10^{7} molecules per steradian. A second, delayed, ablation pulse produces another LiH beam in a different part of the same gas pulse, thereby almost doubling the signal. A long pulse, lasting 150 microseconds, can make the beam up to 15 times more intense.

8 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (7)

• Quo vadis, cold molecules? - Editorial review
• Deceleration and electrostatic trapping of OH radicals
• Slowing heavy, ground-state molecules using an alternating gradient decelerator
• Phase Space Manipulation of Cold Free Radical OH Molecules
• Production of cold formaldehyde molecules for study and control of chemical reaction dynamics with hydroxyl radicals
• Ultracold Rb-OH collisions and prospects for sympathetic cooling
• Production and deceleration of a pulsed beam of metastable NH ($a^1\Delta$) radicals

Cited by in corpus (10)

• High-resolution optical spectroscopy with a buffer-gas-cooled beam of BaH molecules
• Interaction between LiH molecule and Li atom from state-of-the-art electronic structure calculations
• Precision measurements with polar molecules: the role of the black body radiation
• Prospects for sympathetic cooling of molecules in electrostatic, ac and microwave traps
• Nonadiabatic transitions in a Stark decelerator
• Stark deceleration of lithium hydride molecules
• Dynamics of thermal Casimir-Polder forces on polar molecules
• Rovibrational optical cooling of a molecular beam
• Pulsed beams as field probes for precision measurement
• Simple and Compact Nozzle Design for Laser Vaporization Sources