Molecular beam collisions with a magnetically trapped target.

Magnetic Trapping and Zeeman Relaxation of NH

NH radicals are magnetically trapped and their Zeeman relaxation and energy transport collision cross sections with helium are measured. Continuous buffer-gas loading of the trap is direct from a roomtemperature molecular beam. The Zeeman relaxation (inelastic) cross section of magnetically trapped electronic, vibrational, and rotational ground state NH molecules in collisions with 3He is measu...

Effect of Cold Collisions on Spin Coherence and Resonance Shifts in a Magnetically Trapped Ultra-Cold Gas

A new MOTRIMS apparatus for high resolution measurements in ion-atom collisions and trapped atoms studies

A new MOTRIMS (magneto-optical trap-target recoil ion momentum spectroscopy) apparatus has been built at the LPC-CAEN, and recently tested with a beam of 2 keV Na projectiles colliding on a trapped Rb target. In this work, we demonstrate the capability of the setup to provide, with a very high signal over background ratio, fully differential cross sections in scattering angle, initial state, an...

Magnetic trapping of molecules via optical loading and magnetic slowing.

Calcium monofluoride (CaF) is magnetically slowed and trapped using optical pumping. Starting from a collisionally cooled slow beam, CaF with an initial velocity of ∼ 30 m/s is slowed via magnetic forces as it enters a 800 mK deep magnetic trap. Employing two-stage optical pumping, CaF is irreversibly loaded into the trap via two scattered photons. We observe a trap lifetime exceeding 500 ms li...

Formation and dynamics of van der Waals molecules in buffer-gas traps.

We show that weakly bound He-containing van der Waals molecules can be produced and magnetically trapped in buffer-gas cooling experiments, and provide a general model for the formation and dynamics of these molecules. Our analysis shows that, at typical experimental parameters, thermodynamics favors the formation of van der Waals complexes composed of a helium atom bound to most open-shell ato...