Ion-Atom and Ion-Molecule Hybrid Systems: Ion-Neutral Chemistry at Ultralow Energies

Pascal Eberle,Dominik Haas,Dong Zhang,Sebastiaan Y T Van De Meerakker,Stefan Willitsch,Krishnamurthy Ravi,Claudio Von Planta,Alexander D Dörfler

doi:10.1088/1742-6596/635/1/012012

Pascal Eberle, Dominik Haas + Show 6 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596/635/1/012012

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Abstract

The study of chemical reactions between ions and neutral species at very low energies reveals precise informations about the dynamics of collisions and fine details of intermolecular interactions. Here, we report progress towards the development of next- generation experiments for the investigation of cold ion-neutral reactions. First, we present a new ’’dynamic” hybrid ion-atom trap which enables the study of collisions with a superior energy resolution accessing a regime in which quantum scattering resonances may become observable. Second, we discuss and numerically characterize the concept and properties of a hybrid trap for cold neutral molecules and molecular ions which paves the way for the study of ion-molecule reactions in the millikelvin regime.

Highlights

Driven by recent technological advances in the cooling of atoms and molecules, the study of collisions and chemical reactions at temperatures below 1 K has emerged as a new scientific field over the past few years [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
We have recently developed a new ”dynamic” hybrid trap which enables experiments with a greatly improved energy resolution which opens up perspectives to resolve the resonance structures
The cold atoms are constantly shuttled back and forth between the two MOT sites so that collisions and chemical reactions with a well-defined energy can occur each time the cloud passes through the ions

Summary

Introduction

Driven by recent technological advances in the cooling of atoms and molecules, the study of collisions and chemical reactions at temperatures below 1 K has emerged as a new scientific field over the past few years [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. Tuning the collision energies could far be achieved by, e.g., imparting a defined amount of micromotion to the ions (the fast oscillating doi:10.1088/1742-6596/635/1/012012 (a) motion driven by the trap’s RF fields) [17]. Because the micromotion is an oscillating motion, the collision-energy distributions achieved in this way were not narrow enough to enable the resolution of resonances, see Fig. 1 (b).

Results

Conclusion