Adiabatic cooling for cold polar molecules on a chip using a controllable high-efficiency electrostatic surface trap

Abstract

We propose a controllable high-efficiency electrostatic surface trap for cold polar molecules on a chip by using two insulator-embedded charged rings and a grounded conductor plate. We calculate Stark energy structure pattern of ND3 molecules in an external electric field using the method of matrix diagonalization. We analyze how the voltages that are applied to the ring electrodes affect the depth of the efficient well and the controllability of the distance between the trap center and the surface of the chip. To obtain a better understanding, we simulate the dynamical loading and trapping processes of ND3 molecules in a |J,KM〉 = |1, − 1〉 state by using classical Monte—Carlo method. Our study shows that the loading efficiency of our trap can reach ∼ 88%. Finally, we study the adiabatic cooling of cold molecules in our surface trap by linearly lowering the potential-well depth (i.e., lowering the trapping voltage), and find that the temperature of the trapped ND3 molecules can be adiabatically cooled from 34.5 mK to ∼ 5.8 mK when the trapping voltage is reduced from −35 kV to −3 kV.