Magneto-Optical Cooling of Atoms

We propose an alternative method to laser cooling. Our approach utilizes the extreme brightness of a supersonic atomic beam, and the adiabatic atomic coilgun to slow atoms in the beam or to bring them to rest. We show how internal-state optical pumping and stimulated optical transitions, combined with magnetic forces can be used to cool the translational motion of atoms. This approach does not rely on momentum transfer from photons to atoms, as in laser cooling. We predict that our method can surpass laser cooling in terms of flux of ultra-cold atoms and phase-space density, with lower required laser power and reduced complexity

Direct Observation of a Feshbach-resonance by Coincidence-detection of Ions and Electrons in Penning Ionization Collisions

Observation of molecular dynamics with quantum state resolution is one of the major challenges in chemical physics. Complete characterization of collision dynamics leads to the microscopic understanding and unraveling of different quantum phenomena such as scattering resonances. We present a new experimental approach for observing molecular dynamics involving neutral particles and ions that is capable in providing state-to-state mapping of the dynamics. We use Penning ionization reaction between argon and metastable helium to generate argon ion and ground state helium atom pairs at separation of several angstroms. The energy of ejected electron carries the information about the initial electronic state of an ion. The coincidence detection of ionic products provides a state resolved description of the post-ionization ion-neutral dynamics. We demonstrate that correlation between the electron and ion energy spectra enables us to directly observe the spin-orbit excited Feshbach resonance state of HeAr$^+$. We measure the lifetime of the quasi-bound HeAr$^+$ A$_2$ state and discuss possible applications of our method

Cold and Slow Molecular Beam

Employing a two-stage cryogenic buffer gas cell, we produce a cold, hydrodynamically extracted beam of calcium monohydride molecules with a near effusive velocity distribution. Beam dynamics, thermalization and slowing are studied using laser spectroscopy. The key to this hybrid, effusive-like beam source is a "slowing cell" placed immediately after a hydrodynamic, cryogenic source [Patterson et al., J. Chem. Phys., 2007, 126, 154307]. The resulting CaH beams are created in two regimes. One modestly boosted beam has a forward velocity of vf = 65 m/s, a narrow velocity spread, and a flux of 10^9 molecules per pulse. The other has the slowest forward velocity of vf = 40 m/s, a longitudinal temperature of 3.6 K, and a flux of 5x10^8 molecules per pulse

A Moving Magnetic Trap Decelerator: a New Source for Cold Atoms and Molecules

We present an experimental realization of a moving magnetic trap decelerator, where paramagnetic particles entrained in a cold supersonic beam are decelerated in a co-moving magnetic trap. Our method allows for an efficient slowing of both paramagnetic atoms and molecules to near stopping velocities. We show that under realistic conditions we will be able to trap and decelerate a large fraction of the initial supersonic beam. We present our first results on deceleration in a moving magnetic trap by bringing metastable neon atoms to near rest. Our estimated phase space volume occupied by decelerated particles at final velocity of 50 m/s shows an improvement of two orders of magnitude as compared to currently available deceleration techniques

Intense Atomic and Molecular Beams via Neon Buffer Gas Cooling

We realize a continuous guided beam of cold deuterated ammonia with a flux of 3e11 ND3 molecules/s and a continuous free-space beam of cold potassium with a flux of 1e16 K atoms/s. A novel feature of the buffer gas source used to produce these beams is cold neon, which, due to intermediate Knudsen number beam dynamics, produces a forward velocity and low-energy tail that is comparable to much colder helium-based sources. We expect this source to be trivially generalizable to a very wide range of atomic and molecular species with significant vapor pressure below 1000 K. This source has properties that make it a good starting point for laser cooling of molecules or atoms, cold collision studies, trapping, or nonlinear optics in buffer-gas-cooled atomic or molecular gases.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figure