Measurements of trap dynamics of cold OH molecules using resonance-enhanced multiphoton ionization

John M. Gray, Jason A. Bossert, Yomay Shyur, and H. J. Lewandowski
Phys. Rev. A 96, 023416 – Published 21 August 2017
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Abstract

Trapping cold, chemically important molecules with electromagnetic fields is a useful technique to study small molecules and their interactions. Traps provide long interaction times, which are needed to precisely examine these low-density molecular samples. However, the trapping fields lead to nonuniform molecular density distributions in these systems. Therefore, it is important to be able to experimentally characterize the spatial density distribution in the trap. Ionizing molecules at different locations in the trap using resonance-enhanced multiphoton ionization (REMPI) and detecting the resulting ions can be used to probe the density distribution even at the low density present in these experiments because of the extremely high efficiency of detection. Until recently, one of the most chemically important molecules, OH, did not have a convenient REMPI scheme identified. Here, we use a newly developed 1+1 REMPI scheme to detect trapped cold OH molecules. We use this capability to measure the trap dynamics of the central density of the cloud and the density distribution. These types of measurements can be used to optimize loading of molecules into traps, as well as to help characterize the energy distribution, which is critical knowledge for interpreting molecular collision experiments.

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  • Received 11 May 2017

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.96.023416

©2017 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Atomic, Molecular & Optical

Authors & Affiliations

John M. Gray*, Jason A. Bossert, Yomay Shyur, and H. J. Lewandowski

  • JILA and Department of Physics, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309-0440, USA

  • *jogr8427@colorado.edu

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Issue

Vol. 96, Iss. 2 — August 2017

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