Abstract
We realize a continuous, intense, cold molecular and atomic beam source based on buffer-gas cooling. Hot vapor (up to 600 K) from an oven is mixed with cold (15 K) neon buffer gas, and then emitted into a high-flux beam. The novel use of cold neon as a buffer gas produces a forward velocity distribution 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. The 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. A continuous guided beam of cold deuterated ammonia with a flux of 3×1011 ND3 molecules s−1 and a continuous free-space beam of cold potassium with a flux of 1×1016 K atoms s−1 are realized.
Highlights
We realize a continuous guided beam of cold deuterated ammonia with flux of 3 × 1011 ND3 molecules s−1 and a continuous free-space beam of cold potassium with flux of 1 × 1016 K atoms s−1
In this work we present substantial developments of this technique and demonstrate them by continuous production of large fluxes of cold potassium atoms and deuterated ammonia molecules
We show that the use of neon as a buffer gas leads to beams with more slow atoms or molecules than helium-based beams, even though the neon gas is at a significantly higher temperature
Summary
Slow, laser cooled atomic sources of atoms have been laboratory standards for over a decade but only recently have cold, slow sources of molecules been demonstrated[1]. This is largely because the complex level structure of molecules makes laser cooling, the workhorse of atom cooling, very difficult for the vast majority of molecules. The fluxes achieved with these molecular sources have been far lower than those achieved in cold atom sources
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