A supersonic beam of metastable neon atoms has been decelerated by exploiting
the interaction between the magnetic moment of the atoms and time-dependent
inhomogeneous magnetic fields in a multistage Zeeman decelerator. Using 91
deceleration solenoids, the atoms were decelerated from an initial velocity of
580m/s to final velocities as low as 105m/s, corresponding to a removal of more
than 95% of their initial kinetic energy. The phase-space distribution of the
cold, decelerated atoms was characterized by time-of-flight and imaging
measurements, from which a temperature of 10mK was obtained in the moving frame
of the decelerated sample. In combination with particle-trajectory simulations,
these measurements allowed the phase-space acceptance of the decelerator to be
quantified. The degree of isotope separation that can be achieved by multistage
Zeeman deceleration was also studied by performing experiments with pulse
sequences generated for 20Ne and 22Ne.Comment: 16 pages, 15 figure
